LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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&p{\ @opi;ria^o 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



READING AND SPEAKING 



FAMILIAR TALKS TO YOUNG MEN WHO WOULD 
SPEAK WELL IN PUBLIC 



Designed as a Text-Book for Colleges and Higher 
Schools, and also for General Use 



BRAINARD GARDNER SMITH, A.M. 

Associate Professor of Elocution and Oratory in Cornell University 



" To affect Speech and Discourse " 

— Measure for Measure 

C NOV 

V 

BOSTON, U.S.A. 

D. C. HEATH & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

1891 



TN 4-1" 



' 



Copyright, 1891, 
By BRAINARD GARDNER SMITH. 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introductory v 



CHAPTER I. 
Control of the Breath 3 

CHAPTER II. 
Faults, and How to Cure Them 10 

CHAPTER III. 
Consonant Sounds 19 

CHAPTER IV. 
Good Articulation and a Natural Manner ... 24 

CHAPTER V. 
Shall we Learn to Read and Speak ? .... 29 

CHAPTER VI. 
Vocal Inflections. Sentences and their Delivery . . 37 



IV CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

Sentences and their Delivery. — Continued 57 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Rhetorical Pauses. The Vocal Effect of Emphasis . 72 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Practical Application 81 

CHAPTER X. 
Some General Suggestions 92 

CHAPTER XI. 
Gesture 100 

CHAPTER XII. 
Physical Earnestness 108 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Suggestions by Experienced Speakers . . . .119 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Declamations 130 



INTRODUCTORY. 



This collection of suggestions to would-be speakers 
consists of most informal talks on matters of importance 
to all young men ; for we are a nation of speech-makers. 
Wendell Phillips used to say that as soon as the Yankee 
baby could sit up in his cradle he called the nursery to 
order, and proceeded to address the house. There are 
some rules in the book, but they are those which my 
experience has taught me ought to be known by every 
speaker ; and as there are not so many as to be burden- 
some, I trust that they may be learned by every young 
man who has this book. 

I have put upon these pages suggestions not usually 
found in print. Some of them may seem trivial ; but I 
have been making them to students in the class-room over 
and over again. Why not print them ? 

I do not claim any originality, or to say what has not 
been said in one way or another by many teachers. In- 
deed, there is no new road to successful public speaking. 
But I have tried to group together, in small compass and 
convenient form, suggestions, rules, hints, encouragements, 
warnings, examples, illustrations, all having bearing on the 
" noble art of oratory," and all likely to be helpful. 

My one aim is to help young men to a natural, comfort- 
able, manly, forceful manner of speech in public. That is 
not oratory ; but it is a long stride towards it. If they add 



VI INTRODUCTORY. 

knowledge, of acquirement, the result of diligent and 
patient study, and if, moreover, they have the "oratorical 
instinct," then I am sure the results will not be fruitless. 

The book is meant for the class-room, for the teacher, 
for the student, as well as for the general reader, and I 
have endeavored to give abundant opportunity for putting 
the suggestions and rules into practice. Practice is the 
main thing. The student must do the work ; the teacher 
may help him do it on the right lines. 

My thanks are due to the distinguished gentlemen who 
so kindly responded to my request for suggestions to 
young men who wish to be public speakers. The chapter 
containing their suggestions is certainly the most inter- 
esting and helpful in this volume. 

I also desire to acknowledge my obligations to Messrs. 
D. Appleton & Co., New York, for permission to make the 
use I have made of Mandeville's " Elements of Reading and 
Oratory " ; to Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, New York, for 
permission to quote from Shepard's " Before an Audi- 
ence" ; to the Penn Publishing Co., Philadelphia, the 
publishers of Henry Ward Beecher's " Oratory," from 
which, by their kind permission, I have taken extracts ; 
and to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, pub- 
lishers of the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Cornell University, io August, 1891. 



READING AND SPEAKING. 



u I hope that you will from the start cultivate Elocution. The power of 
speaking with grace and energy, — the power of using aright the best words 
of our noble language, — is itself a fortune, and a reputation, — if it is associ- 
ated and enriched by knowledge and sense. I would, therefore, give a special 
attention to all that is required of you in this department. But not one study 
prescribed by the government is to be neglected." — Rufus Choate, in a 
letter to his son, then a student in Amherst College. 

" Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly 
intelligible to the person to whom you speak." — Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

" I define oratory to be the art of influencing conduct with the truth sent 
home by all resources of the living man." — Henry Ward Beecher. 

" Deliberative eloquence, in its highest forms and noblest exertion, is the 
utterances of men of genius, — practiced, earnest, and sincere, according to a 
ride of art, — in presence of large assemblies, in great conjuncture of public 
affairs, to persuade a people." — Rufus Choate. 



READING AND SPEAKING. 

CHAPTER I. 
CONTROL OF THE BREATH. 

Their words are natural breath. Tempest. 

'Tis breath thou lackest. King Richard II. 

How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath to say to 
me that thou art out of breath? Romeo and Jidiet. 

Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again. King Henry IV. 

My first suggestion is that you learn to breathe properly. 
Nothing is more important than the ability to control the 
breath. It is not my province to speak of the physiology 
of the vocal organs, of the lungs, of the chest cavity, of 
the midriff or diaphragm. Any modern elementary work 
on physiology will furnish all the necessary information at 
a trifling expense of money and time. I do not claim that 
there is anything new in what I shall say. There are several 
authorities on the subject. Sir Morell Mackenzie, Oskar 
Guttmann, Leo Kofler, have given valuable suggestions ; 
and so have Dr. Lenox Browne and Emil Bhenke in their 
"Voice in Speech and Song," a work which I can recom- 
mend, and to which I am indebted for much that follows. 

There are three ways by which the chest may be enlarged 
and air taken into the lungs. 

I. By raising the shoulders, collar-bones, and upper 
part of the chest. This is called clavicular or collar-bone 
breathing. 



4 READING AND SPEAKING. 

2. By extending the lower or floating ribs sideways. 
This is called lateral or costal breathing. 

3. By flattening the midriff or diaphragm, — the " great 
breathing muscle," as Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes calls 
it. This is called midriff or diaphragmatic or abdominal 
breathing. 

The lungs rest upon the midriff ; and, when this powerful 
muscle is flattened, they must follow. At the same time 
the abdomen is protruded, because its contents are pushed 
downward by the midriff. The lower ribs are also pushed 
out by the same muscle, so that costal and midriff breath- 
ing take place together almost invariably. I believe that 
the best authorities agree that they should take place 
together ; thus the chest cavity is enlarged where its walls 
offer the least resistance, and where the lungs are the 
largest. 

No speaker should ever employ clavicular breathing 
even in combination with costal and midriff breathing. It 
forces the upper chest walls up against the root of the 
throat, and has a tendency to congest the blood-vessels 
and tissues there. It necessitates controlling the exit of 
the breath by the glottis, which was not made for that 
purpose. Throaty tones, " speaker's sore throat," and 
kindred troubles are largely due to this method of breath- 
ing and of controlling the breath. It follows that an 
abandonment of clavicular breathing, and the practice of 
deep breathing (costal and midriff breathing combined) 
often cure sore throats, and correct faulty tones. 

When the speaker breathes — ///spires — by flattening 
the midriff, he is able to control the breath by that strong 
muscle. As long as he holds it down, the air that he has 
taken in remains in the lungs, just as water remains in the 
cells of a sponge as it lies in the open hand. Close the 



CONTROL OF THE BREATH. 5 

hand, and the water is squeezed out. Close the hand 
slowly, and the water oozes out slowly. Relax the midriff 
and lower ribs slowly, and the air will leave the lungs 
slowly. The throat ought to have nothing more to do 
with controlling the breath than the chanter of a bagpipe 
has to do with controlling the air in the big bag under the 
piper's arm. The throat — the vocal organs — should be 
used to speak with. All its muscles should be relaxed, and 
the speech organs should merely use the air as it passes 
from the lungs through the mouth. And no more air 
should be allowed to pass out than is needed for speech. 

I am now speaking with no design of being scientifically 
accurate. I am striving to give you impressions only. 

Dr. Browne lays down this rule: "The criterion of 
correct inspiration is an increase in the size of the abdo- 
men and of the lower part of the chest. Whoever draws 
in the abdomen and raises the upper part of the chest in 
the act of filling the lungs, breathes wrongly." 

There are a few very simple exercises, which, if practiced 
regularly, will give you control of your breathing, and, to a 
great degree, of your voice. They should be practiced 
when there is no restricting clothing to interfere with the 
freedom of the waist. After going to bed at night, and 
before getting up in the morning, are good times. Many 
of my pupils practice them in the gymnasium, stretching 
out flat on the mats, or on the inclined surfaces of some of 
the large pieces of apparatus. 

Exercises in Deep Breathing. 

Lie flat on the back, placing one hand lightly on the 

abdomen and the other on the lower ribs. This is that 

you may feel what is going on down there, and get distinct 

impressions. Endeavor to expand the lower ribs and raise 



6 READING AND SPEAKING. 

the abdomen slowly and steadily ; at the same time breathe 
slowly and steadily through the nostrils. If the ribs are 
expanded, and the midriff flattened, the air must come 
into the lungs, just as when you open your fingers the air 
will fill the cells of a damp sponge which you have squeezed 
in your hand. If you breathe deeply, the ribs must ex- 
pand, and the midriff flatten. But I find that most 
persons get the best impression of deep breathing by 
putting their attention more upon the movements of the 
ribs and abdomen than upon the thought of taking in air. 
Some find it difficult at first to get any movement of the 
ribs and abdomen. Of course, the abdomen is moved simply 
because the midriff pushes down upon its contents ; but at 
first to most persons there is no sense of movement in the 
midriff. Never mind that ; look for its effects in the dis- 
tended abdomen. 

Right here I wish to guard you against the idea that 
you must see how far out you can push the abdomen. You 
are to strive to get a large expansion of the lower part of 
the chest cavity. 

Having thus taken a deep breath, which, as it seems to 
you, has caused the ribs and abdomen to move, or, better 
still, having by the expansion of the ribs and the disten- 
sion of the abdomen filled the lungs with air, hold it there 
a few seconds, not over four or five. Do not hold it by 
closing the glottis, or, as it seems to you, by shutting up 
the throat, or closing the air passages. Hold it by keeping 
the midriff down, and the ribs expanded. As long as you 
thus press firmly down and out, no air can leave the lungs, 
however wide open the throat, mouth, and nostrils may be. 

Having thus held the breath four or five seconds, expel 
it suddenly from the lungs as completely and quickly as 
possible. The result will be a complete collapse of the 



CONTROL OF THE BREATH. 7 

lower part of the body. The midriff will fly back, the ribs 
fall to their place, the abdomen sink down. I have been 
thus minute in giving these directions, because of the 
importance of the exercise. I will repeat the directions 
briefly. 

I. Inhale slowly through the nostrils, expanding the lower ribs, 
and flattening the midriff. Hold the breath four or five seconds by 
keeping the midriff down. Then expel the air sharply and quickly 
through the mouth. 

Repeating this for two or three minutes, you will have a 
realizing sense that the muscles about the waist are having 
a new experience. Do not fatigue them. Do not overdo 
any of these exercises. 

After practicing the first exercise until the midriff is 
under pretty good control, take up the second exercise. 
It is just the opposite of the first. 

II. Inhale very quickly through the mouth, so that the ribs and 
midriff will respond quickly. You may find it easier to give your 
thought to the expansion and distension of ribs and abdomen, getting 
the impression that their movement brings the air into the lungs ; 
which is the fact. Hold the breath as before, and then exhale very 
slowly and steadily through the mouth, controlling the breath 
entirely with the midriff. 

This at first will be difficult. The tendency will be to 
expel the air in jets and spurts. Practice until you can 
hold a lighted candle before your mouth and empty the 
lungs without causing the flame to flicker. A feather will 
serve instead of a flame while practicing on your back. 
Afterwards, when sitting or standing, the lighted candle 
will be best. It is this control of the outgoing air that 
will do much towards giving you a firm, steady voice, and 
towards curing a throaty tone. In practicing this exercise 
keep your attention on the midriff. Do not think of the 



8 READING AND SPEAKING. 

throat. All the muscles there should be relaxed. Remem- 
ber this when you come to speak ; and whenever your 
throat begins to feel tired, whenever you are conscious of 
a throat, turn your attention to the midriff, and by a steady 
pressure there take the strain from the throat. 

III. The third exercise consists in breathing in slowly as in I., 
and breathing out slowly as in II., holding the breath as in each. 

After a week of practice the breath may be held a little 
longer each day ; but it should never be held over twenty 
seconds. These exercises are not worth reading about 
unless they are regularly and persistently practiced until 
the habit of deep breathing and control of the midriff is 
attained. Practiced for four or five minutes two or three 
times a day, two or three minutes five or six times a day, 
a minute ten or twelve times a day, they will do much for 
you. Such practice is better than half an hour once a day. 
Do not overdo the exercising when you begin. Make 
haste slowly. After getting pretty good control of the 
breath while lying flat on the back, try the exercises while 
sitting erect in a chair, with the shoulders well thrown 
back. Then practice while walking. Keep at it persist- 
ently until the habit of breathing correctly is acquired. 

I might fill several pages with the experiences of those 
who, by faithfully practicing these simple exercises, have 
been wonderfully benefited. I will content myself with 
quoting the testimony of Dr. Lenox Browne. 

II It must be borne in mind that unflinching regularity in this matter 
is of the greatest importance. Exercise in moderation, regularly and 
conscientiously repeated, will increase the breathing capacity, improve 
the voice, and make speaking easy. It may change, and has changed, 
the falsetto of a grown man into a full, sonorous, man's voice ; it may 
restore, and has restored, a lost voice ; as it also may cure, and often 
has cured, clergyman's [speaker's] sore throat. It will certainly turn 



CONTROL OF THE BREATH. 9 

a greater quantity of dark blue blood into bright red blood ; the appetite 
will increase ; sounder sleep will be enjoyed ; flesh will be gained ; and 
the flabby, pallid skin will fill out and get a healthy, rosy color. All 
this, and more, may be, and often has been, the result of lung gym- 
nastics carried on in moderation and with perseverance. It is needless 
to add that a man will no more improve his breathing by fitful and 
exaggerated exercises, than he could hope to become a proficient upon 
the violin by practicing once or twice a month for six hours at a 
stretch." 

I believe that I have given enough suggestions to enable 
any one to acquire the habit of deep breathing. To those 
who wish to study the subject further I recommend the 
authors I have named, and also a very interesting article 
on " The Relations of Diaphragmatic and Costal Respira- 
tion," published in The Journal of Physiology, Vol. XL, 
No. 3, March, 1890. 

Never, in exercising or speaking, strive to fill the lungs 
as full of air as possible, or to hold the breath as long as 
possible. Both are injurious. The lungs should be con- 
stantly replenished with air, so that there shall be an 
ample supply for the speaker ; not an over-supply. There- 
fore, in speaking, take breath at every opportunity. Do 
not see how far you can go in a sentence without taking 
breath. It is fatal to good speaking, for it is certain to 
induce hurried speaking, the voice growing weaker and 
weaker as the breath becomes scantier. The Rev. J. P. 
Sandlands, in his book, "The Voice and Public Speaking," 
says : " It will be found, after considerable practice, that it 
is possible to take in sufficient breath for reading a very 
long passage. I have myself read in the churchyard, on a 
cold afternoon, the whole of the Lord's Prayer, after a 
single inspiration." It is difficult to decide which is the 
worse — the advice given, or the taste that permitted the 
publication of this peculiar devotional performance. 



READING AND SPEAKING. 



CHAPTER II. 

FAULTS, AND HOW TO CURE THEM. 

For heaven's sake, speak comfortably. King Richard II. 

Why, masters, have your instruments been at Naples, that they 

speak i' the nose thus? Othello. 

What sort of a voice have you ? High pitched or low ? 
Weak or strong ? You do not know ? That is not surpris- 
ing. It's a wise man that knows his own voice. When 
the phonograph is so improved that sound can be repro- 
duced, minus the peculiar phonographic quality that now 
characterizes it, men may easily learn to recognize their 
own voices. Even as it is, you can recognize the repro- 
duced voice of your friend who has talked to the phono- 
graph. Talk to it yourself, and see if you ever heard that 
voice before. 

What are your faults as a reader or speaker ? Do you 
articulate poorly ? Do you lisp ? Do you talk " through 
your nose," as we incorrectly say ? Do you begin your 
sentences with a yell and end them with a gasp ? Do 
you "make faces" when you speak, or is your face as 
expressionless as a pan of milk? Do you slouch, or 
straddle, or strut before your audience ? Do you finger 
the skirts of your coat ? Have you a?iy bad habits ? Of 
course you do not know. If you did, you would cure 
them ; or try to. It does not need an experienced and 
high-priced teacher of elocution to tell you of your faults ; 
although, undoubtedly, such an one could best put you 
in the way of overcoming them. But, unfortunately, good 



FAULTS, AND HOW TO CURE THEM. II 

teachers of elocution are not always available, and it is 
not always safe for a person to try to cure himself, par- 
ticularly when he has no means of diagnosing his case. 

One of the worst tones, — and when I thus use the 
word "tone," I mean what Webster defines as "an 
affected speaking, with a measured rhythm, and a regular 
rise and fall of the voice," — one of the worst tones I 
ever heard was possessed by a young man with oratorical 
aspirations and weak lungs. To strengthen his lungs, he 
was advised to read in the open air ; so, one long vacation, 
he armed himself with a volume of Webster's orations, and 
all that summer made the pasture and the wood-lot ring 
with the weighty sentences of the Defender of the Consti- 
tution. He strengthened his lungs, and developed a sing- 
song which he was never able to overcome. 

Another young man came to my class with a very 
pronounced and disagreeable tone. I called his attention 
to the fault, and suggested that, in addition to his regular 
class work, he read aloud daily to some one who should 
tell him when he departed from a natural, conversational 
manner. Fortunately, he could have for his critic his 
intelligent mother. He read aloud to her daily and often ; 
read newspapers, novels, his lessons, anything, endeavoring 
constantly to "tell it " in the most natural way. She was 
a careful critic, and kept him to his work. At the end of 
six months he could read and speak remarkably well ; and 
the tone never showed itself except in moments of unusual 
excitement. He could have cured himself entirely ; if, 
indeed, he has not. Such faults will not disappear in a 
day, nor in a week, nor in a month ; but they can be cured 
by patient persistence. 

A gentleman was called from active business life to a 
professor's chair in a technical college. He found it 



12 READING AND SPEAKING. 

necessary to lecture, not only to his students, but before 
various associations. He asked me to hear him read, and 
to criticise and suggest. He lisped ; "r " was as unknown 
to him as to Dundreary, with his "wow, and wumpus, and 
wiot," and he had a weak voice. In a few lessons I 
pointed out these defects, of which before he had known 
almost nothing, and advised him as I had advised the 
student. The professor read daily to his wife, and prac- 
ticed on a list of difficult words which I made out for him. 
The result was a rapid and almost surprising improvement. 
But he worked very hard. 

It was some time after I had begun preaching this 
practice to those who came to me for help, that I chanced 
upon this paragraph in an article entitled " How to Read 
Well," by Edmund Shaftesbury, the author of several 
works on voice culture and elocution : — 

" The person who desires to acquire the colloquial style should take 
a newspaper and select some short sentence, and say this aloud to some 
person in his presence. For instance, to-day's paper contains the 
following : ' The heat of yesterday was so intense that many persons 
were prostrated.' If you say this, the person hearing it will suppose 
it is a remark of your own. It is better to sit behind the person, so 
that the paper may not be seen ; then read as many selections from it 
as possible, trying in each case to deceive your hearer. A pupil, who 
was a most unnatural and affected reader, adopted this method to cure 
himself. He reports : < One evening I was alone with my wife, and 
taking up the paper, I tried to read the following in a colloquial 
manner: "Miss Gracie Smith, who recently arrived in this city, is as 
beautiful as she is accomplished. Few persons can resist her charms." 
My wife immediately arose and said, " And what do you know about 
Miss Smith? 11 "I know nothing, 11 I said; "I was merely reading to 
you from the paper. 11 "Oh, I thought you were talking! 111 Every 
reader should practice in this manner until perfection is reached. 1 ' 

So, you see, you may help yourself by getting a friend 
to help you. The teacher of elocution could help you 



FAULTS, AND HOW TO CURE THEM. 1 3 

better than the inexperienced friend, probably ; but it is 
not every one who can afford to take one or two lessons 
a day, six days in the week for six months. But that is 
exactly the way to break up bad habits of speech. It is 
the constant daily practice, day after day, whether you feel 
like it or not, that brings the unruly tongue into subjec- 
tion, makes the weak voice strong, enables the high-voiced 
speaker to hear his own squeak and to place his tones 
where they belong, or the indistinct growler to develop a 
ringing baritone. The teacher may tell you just what to 
do and how to do it, but twelve hours later you do not 
know whether you are doing what he told you to do, or not. 
It is well for those who take lessons in elocution, to be 
accompanied by a friend, who shall also hear the lesson, 
and then help the pupil carry out the instruction. 

But suppose that there is no teacher of elocution, and 
you learn that your voice is pitched too high. How are 
you going to lower it ? You have not known that it was 
too high. It has always sounded well to you. You must 
have some assistance, and your assistant must, if possible, 
imitate you, to show you how you speak. Then you must 
try to imitate some one who speaks well. With breath 
well controlled, with throat relaxed, with mouth well open, 
strive to speak in a big, strong voice. Think of the sound 
as big and round, and send it out. Think of the sound as 
coming from the chest, and roll it out. Work away, with 
the aid of the friend, — brother, sister, mother, wife, room- 
mate, whomsoever, — who shall guard you against a throaty 
grunt or a husky growl ; who shall tell you when you pro- 
duce a good sound, so that you may learn to hear it, and 
thus cultivate the ear as well as the voice. Read anything 
you please ; but the more open vowel sounds — alls and 
ohs — there are, the better. Do not hurry ; keep plenty of 



14 READING AND SPEAKING. 

breath in the lungs ; and, above all, do not tire the throat. 
Say to yourself constantly, "I will get this voice down." 
Try, always, to talk in a low tone. Ask your friends to 
tell you when you are " getting high." Think in a low 
voice. The expert teacher can do wonders in "placing" 
a voice; but much can be done without the expert teacher. 
The end you aim at is to acquire the habit of speaking in a 
lower key. 

All this applies equally well to the person whose voice 
is pitched too low. Let me quote a paragraph from a 
lecture on " Common-Sense Elocution," delivered by the 
Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D., the editor of the Christian Advo- 
cate : — 

" Many a man is born with a bass voice. I had such a voice. I 
used it without skill. A Professor of Elocution, who was a master, 
took hold of me. He told me to get a melodeon. I did so ; and every 
morning I took the pitch G, and then the pitch C, and practiced speak- 
ing. Then I took a tuning-fork into the pulpit and took the pitch C. 
I went on practicing, until I can now stand before an audience, and 
pitch my voice to meet any requirement. I then took to walking in the 
woods and practicing. I say this much, because I want to show what 
can be done with the voice." 

It does not follow that you must learn to pitch your 
voice at C exactly, or at G precisely, — though the more 
exact the ear and the more complete the control of the 
voice the better, of course, — but you must learn to know, 
to hear, when your voice is too low or too high, too weak 
or too strong. I am sure I cannot do better than to quote 
a page or so from the lectures of the late Nathan Shepard, 
published under the title, " Before an. Audience." They 
were written especially for students preparing for the min- 
istry ; but the book ought to be in every would-be orator's 
hands, despite the author's rather unreasonable opposition 
to all "elocutionists," and all their methods. 



FAULTS, AND HOW TO CURE THEM. 1 5 

" The pupil in vocal music," he says, "practices occasionally; the 
pupil in public speaking must practice incessantly. That is, he is to 
speak in the coveted tones whenever he speaks, whether in public or in 
private. And as, on the one hand, the pupil in singing may talk in 
whatever voice he chooses, so long as he sticks to his ' part ' while 
singing, so, on the other hand, the pupil in speaking will find that, how- 
ever much or well he may sing in a baritone, he will still talk in the key 
of the cockatoo. 

"You are invariably, not occasionally, but invariably, to use the 
strongest tone you can create. Joke in it, and shout in it, and whisper 
in it. Yes ; and think in it. You can think in it (after you know how) 
as easily as you can speak in it. Great actors know how. They go 
over their 'part 1 with vehement reflection. The late Mrs. Siddons 
spent hours of silent meditation upon hers. It is not an occasional 
exercise I am talking about, like the ' lessons in elocution ' with which 
quacks lie in wait at the pockets of preachers, who ought to know 
from experience that the root of the matter is in the intellect, the reason, 
the understanding, the reflective faculties, the perceptive faculties, and 
all the rest of the faculties. . . . But whatever be its name, or nature, 
or origin, or cause, this offensive tone, and every other offensive tone, 
can only be effectively and permanently removed by willing its removal. 
It is sufficient for the elocutionist and actor and singer to get rid of it 
occasionally; and, even then, only by a use of the will. But the public 
speaker must rid himself of it perpetually ; since it is perpetually that 
his art calls for its removal. 

"This new voice is a new language, and should be desired and 
acquired as such. It necessitates pains and thought and consecration 
and continuity like that bestowed upon the acquisition of any other 
foreign language ; and, like every other foreign language, you will never 
learn to converse in it or speak in public in it, unless you talk in it 
incessantly. In spite of your utmost exertions, it will slip away from 
you often before you get hold of it permanently. You will forget and 
forget and forget this lesson in self-discipline and self-drill, and in 
knowing what you and your voice are about, and will find yourself say- 
ing, ' How are you? ' or, 'What a hot summer we are having,' or, * Let 
us sing the forty-fifth hymn,' or, ' May it please the Court, Gentlemen 
of the Jury,' in the old natural falsetto which came to you through 
negligence, instead of in the new and equally natural baritone which 
comes to you by the use of the will and knowing what you and your 
voice are about. 



1 6 READING AND SPEAKING. 

" The value of a vigorous, flexible, mellow baritone for public speak- 
ing cannot be overestimated. It is a richly paying investment. It 
covers a multitude of minor sins. It compensates somewhat for defi- 
ciencies in rhetoric and thought. There is health in it, and dignity, 
and manliness, and character." 

True, every word of it. 

Suppose that you learn that you speak too fast, or that 
you drawl, or that your articulation is faulty, that your 
tongue refuses to obey you, that your lips are stiff and 
unwieldy. You have not thought of these things before. 
Now you hear, and feel, and know them, because they have 
been pointed out to you. What are you to do ? Why, 
strive to overcome these faults, of course ; just as you would 
try to overcome a tendency to toe in, or to stoop, or to 
carry your hands in your trousers pockets, or any other 
bad habit. Read daily, speak daily, — before a critic if 
possible, — with this end in view. If you find it next to 
impossible to say distinctly, "it sufficeth us" or "selfish 
spirits," if "r" is a difficult letter to speak and "dst" a 
difficult sound, practice speaking them ; get command of 
them. 

Most manuals of elocution give lists of these difficult 
combinations ; or you can make your own list. Keep the 
difficult words and sounds constantly in mind, and spend 
idle moments, when walking, waiting, courting sleep upon 
a wakeful pillow, in repeating and mastering them. 

In " Voice in Speech and Song" there are some simple 
exercises given for strengthening and controlling the mus- 
cles of the lips and tongue. You will be surprised to 
find how difficult these simple exercises are ; but it is not 
surprising. You probably have never used these muscles 
properly, or, at least, consciously, and they must be taught 
to obey the will. The exercises should be practiced before 



FAULTS, AND HOW TO CURE THEM. 1 7 

a mirror. A hand-glass is best, so held that a strong 
light may fall upon it and be reflected into the mouth. 

Exercises for the Lips. 

I. Open the mouth as widely as possible every way; look at 
the tongue, the soft palate, and the back of the throat. Then shut 
the mouth again. Repeat this several times. 

Very simple ? Yes. But just notice that a minute 
spent in this exercise shows you that it is an exercise 
which makes you extremely conscious of several muscles 
you had never thought of before. 

II. Open the mouth widely enough to put two fingers between 
the teeth ; then smile so as to draw the corners of the mouth side- 
ways until they are each bordered by a little perpendicular line. 
Now suddenly alter the shape of the mouth by protruding the lips 
as much as possible, with only a small opening between them, as in 
whistling. The changes must be quick and smart. Repeat this 
several times. If it makes you laugh, so much the better ; for that 
will put you in a good temper, which may be useful to you in going 
through a few apparently still more absurd exercises. 

III. Smile, with the lips firmly closed, drawing the corners of 
the mouth as much sideways as possible. Then smartly protrude 
the lips, still firmly closed, with no aperture whatever. Repeat 
this several times. 

Exercises for the Tongue. 

I. Open the mouth widely. Put out the tongue straight as far 
as possible. Draw it back smartly, and try to let it lie flat and 
low, but touching the lower teeth all around. Repeat this several 
times. In this, as in the remaining tongue exercises, great care must 
be taken to keep the lips and the lower jaw perfectly still. 

II. Put the tip of the tongue against the lower front teeth, and 
then push it out as far as possible ; this will, of course, completely 
roll it up. Then draw it back smartly, as in Exercise I. Repeat. 

III. Keep the root of the tongue as flat as you can, raise the tip 
and push it perpendicularly and quite slowly towards the roof of the 



1 8 READING AND SPEAKING. 

mouth. Then lower it again as gradually, until it has once more 
assumed its original position. Repeat. 

IV. Raise the tip of the tongue as in Exercise III., and move it 
gradually from one side to the other, so that the highest point of it 
describes a semicircle. Repeat. 

I know of nothing of the kind more helpful than these 
tongue exercises. They are based on common-sense. The 
flute player practices his " tootle-tootle-tootle," or " tucka, 
tucka, tucka " for months, that he may acquire facility in 
the art of double-tonguing. Why should not the speaker 
strive to get his tongue under like control ? I have 
known more than one person, by endeavoring to practice 
these movements, ascertain that he was tongue-tied : not 
enough perhaps to affect his speech in ordinary conversa- 
tion, but enough to render clean-cut articulation difficult, 
or impossible. Such a person should go to the best sur- 
geon available for advice. The knife sometimes is used 
to good effect then. Again, let me warn you against over- 
doing these exercises. They will be found to be very 
fatiguing at first. " A little and often " is a good rule. 



CONSONANT SOUNDS. 19 



CHAPTER III. 

CONSONANT SOUNDS. 

I abhor such fanatical fantasms, such insociable and point-devise com- 
panions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should 
say doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt; d, e, b, t; not d, e, t. He 
clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur, nebour, neigh, abbre- 
viated, ne. This is abhominable (which he would call abominable). 

Love's Labor's Lost. 

You should combine with the exercises just given, prac- 
tice in the consonant sounds. If you will notice carefully, 
you will see that indistinctness in articulation is due, 
almost always, to a failure to give the consonants their 
proper value, particularly when they stand at the end of 
words. The words, " From the stern text of the Acts of 
Uniformity," for instance, are often read, " From the stern 
tex of the Ax of Uniformity." Careful study of the fol- 
lowing tables will repay you. Give each sound more than 
its proper value — overdo it, if you please — at first. Let 
the final sounds linger on tlfe lips or the tongue. Distinct- 
ness is what you are to aim at. 

The Labials, so called because they are made with the 
lips, are b, p, m, w, v, f. They should be pronounced as 
follows : — 

b, as in bab, babe, bad, bade, barb. 

1. Bad Bob blabbed and blubbered bitterly. 

2. Be bold, be bold ; be not too bold. 

3. By the blue Bosphorus the black bandit bled. 

p, as in pap, pape, peep, pip, pipe. 

1. Papa peeped at Peter, and playfully pelted Pat. 



20 READING AND SPEAKING. 

2. Stop stooping as you step, Polly. 

3. Hope on, hope ever. 
(Not, Ho pon, ho pevcr.) 

m, as in maim, mam, mime, mome, mum. 

1. Mamma, make .Mar)' mind Martha. 

2. Madam, my man maimed your moose. 

3. Mile-stones mark the march of time. 
{Not, Milestone sniark the jnar chof time.} 

w, as in woe, was, weld, wise, wear. 

1. William West wears white wool. 

2. Woe ! when wise women won't work. 

3. Well, Washington was wiser than Webster. 

v, as in valve, vale, have, love, brave. 

1. Vain the valor of the brave savage. 

2. Value virtue, love bravery. 

3. Valiant deeds for vengeance or revenge. 
(Not, Vallian deeds for venjan sor revenge.} 

f, as in fife, fifth, life, lift, gift. 

1. Frank faithfully fifes, forgetful of foes. 

{Not, Frang faithfully fives, forgetfulla foes.} 

2. Firmly the fowl faced the fierce fox. 

3. A faithful life lifts the father's fortunes. 

(Not, liffs) 

The Dentals, so called because made by the action of 
the tongue against the teeth, are d, t, th (two sounds), s, 
z, zh, sh, j, ch. 

d, as in did, dado, add, sad, bad. 

1. Did Daniel dare to dare Darius ? 

2. Add a dado, and don't daub the door. 
(Not Ad-da-dado) 

3. The band blared sadly, Dan declared. 
(Not, The ba?i blared) 

t, as in taunt, tent, test, tight, tift. 
1. Tie taut the tent, and test it. 
(Not, tes tit.) 



CONSONANT SOUNDS. 

2. To-morrow try and talk truly and truthfully. 

3. Aunt went to town, intent on treating Tommy. 
{Not, Ann tiven f town, inten ton) 

th, as in than, then, breathe, beneath, bathe. 

1. Breathe with care ; do not mouth thy words. 
{Not, Bree tlvwith care ; do not mow thy words.) 

2. Their smooth lithe forms were bathed in oil baths. 

3. Swathed in light clothes they writhed beneath. 

th, as in thin, thorn, birth, breath, wrath. 

1. Two athletic youths were third and fourth. 
{Not, athletty kewth swere third andfoztrth?) 

2. Your mirth hath death in it, quoth the Goth. 
{Not, Yozir 7tzir thath death iiz it, qzw the Goth.) 

3. The fifth youth went to his bath in wrath. 
{Not, The Jiff youth went to his baa thin wrath.) 

s, as in saw, sent, cease, suns, face. 

1. Susan sent some sweets to Sam. 
{Not, Susan sen sozne sweets to Sam.) 

2. Cease sighing, since sighs seldom secure success. 
{Not, See sighing, sin sighs eldom seczire success.) 

3. Star after star sinks from sight in the heavens. 

{Not, sizzgs from sight) 

z, as in zeal, zone, zenith, rou^e, haj. 

1. Rouse the zealots to resist the Zulus. 

2. The zephyr has gone, the blizzards are rising. 

{Not, the blizzard sare rising.) 

3. Each daisy teaches a lesson. Abuse them not. 

{Not, teachy sa lesson.) 

zh, as in azure, brazier, glazier, treasure. 

1. The hosier in his leisure had a vision. 

2. The seizure of the grazier caused displeasure. 

{Not, cazised his pleasure?) 

3. In Elysium are treasures without measure. 

sh, as in sham, shame, push, hush, fish. 

1. Shun selfish spirits who push shamelessly. 
{Not, Shun selfy shpirits who push aimlessly.) 



22 READING AND SPEAKING. 

2. The sunshine shows ships with shining sheets. 

3. When fish rush shoreward, shun savage sharks. 

(Not, rush orcward) 

j, as in jam, gem, jig, cage, sage. 

1. Judge justly James, his savage majesty. 

2. Join joyfully in the jubilant jig. 

3. Gems and jewels just from Japan. 

ch, as in chat, chief, church, rich, which. 

1. The chief cheerfully chose the choicest chair. 

(Not, choices chair.} 

2. Richard chanted in church like a cherub. 

3. March Charles, and fetch starch cheerfully. 

The Palatals, so called because made by the aid of the 
palate, are g, k, y. 

g, as in gag, gad, hag, gasp, tug. 

1. Go get the gun and give the goose a shot. 

2. The hag gagged Gladys gasping in great grief. 

3. Hug gold, grasping Caspar, greedy ghoul. 
(Not, Hug old) 

k, as in kick, clock, kink, coke, quill. 

1. Kick, clown, and climb quick, Carlos. 

2. Kill the king, the crank cried crossly. 

3. Care killed the cat, the crow cried caw. 

y, as in yet, year, yard, yacht, yak. 

1. Youthful Yankee yachtmen squared the yards. 

2. The yokel yielded with a yell. 

3. A yellow yak yearned for a yew. 

The Nasals, made by a free escape of vocalized breath 
through the nostrils, are n and ng. 

n, as in no, name, man, ran, won. 

1. No man need know need in this new nation. 

2. Nathan, nothing needing, noted not the noise. 

3. Now none kneel when the bell knells. 



CONSONANT SOUNDS. 23 

ng, as in sing, song, sung, singing, ringing. 

1. The singing grew fainter, the song dying away. 

2. Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling. 

3. And dashing, and flashing, and splashing, and clashing. 

The Linguals, so called because made chiefly with the 
tongue, are 1 and r. 

1, as in lull, Lulu, little, fall, bottle. 

i . Lulu lulled the lamb until it fell asleep. 

2. They fell like leaves and fill long lists. 
(Not, They fell ike leaves art fill ong liss.) 

3. Lanky Lascars lolled listlessly along shore. 

r, as in roar, rear, hair, roam, roast. 

1. Robert, absorbed in riches, rarely reckoned wrongly. 

2. The car was adorned with corn and drawn by four horses. 
(Not, The cah was adawned with caw?i, and drawn dyfo" 1 

hosses.) 

3. The worm yearned for a ripe pear, urged by hunger. 

(Not, for a rye pear) 

These sounds should be mastered, particularly the final 
combinations. Watch your own articulation carefully. As 
I have said, whenever a difficult combination is found 
make a note of it and practice it over and over again. 



24 READING AND SPEAKING. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GOOD ARTICULATION AND A NATURAL MANNER. 

Mind your speech a little. King Lear. 

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the 
tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the 
town-crier spoke my lines.. Hamlet. 

A most rare speaker, to nature none more bound. King Henry VIII. 

It is almost needless to dwell on the importance of 
good articulation and correct pronunciation. I do not 
mean precise speech of the "prunes, prisms, and pota- 
toes " variety ; but distinct speech. Having learned so 
to control the breath that, in speaking, no air goes out of 
the mouth that is not vocalized ; having got complete con- 
trol of lips and tongue, then strive to speak with the least 
effort and with the utmost distinctness. Loud speaking 
is not necessarily distinct speaking. Noise is not oratory. 
We want no more of what Wendell Phillips characterized 
as "pulmonary eloquence." Hear what Ernest Legouve 
says in his charming little work, " Reading as a Fine 
Art" : — 

''Articulation plays an immense part in the domain of reading. 
Articulation, and articulation alone, gives clearness, energy, passion, 
and force. Such is its power that it can even overcome deficiency of 
voice in the presence of a large audience. There have been actors of 
the foremost rank, who had scarcely any voice. Potier had no voice. 
Monvel, the famous Monvel, not only had no voice, he had no teeth ! 
And yet no one ever lost a word that fell from his lips ; and never 
was there 2. more delightful, more moving artist than he, thanks to his 



GOOD ARTICULATION AND A NATURAL MANNER. 25 

perfect articulation. The best reader I ever knew was M. Andrieux, 
whose voice was not only weak, but worn, hoarse, and croaking. Yet 
his perfect enunciation triumphed over all these defects." 

I said that loud speaking is not necessarily distinct 
speaking. Far from it. But one must speak so as to be 
heard. In this endeavor to make noise do the work of 
articulation, thoughtless speakers often become artificial, 
— acquire a tone. Men said of Wendell Phillips that he 
spoke to an audience of two thousand as though by his 
own fireside. It is safe to say that he did no such thing. 
If he had, he would not have been heard. He spoke in a 
natural way, in a conversational manner, but not with con- 
versational articulation. If you speak to your audience 
as you speak to your friend by your fireside, your audience 
will not understand what you say. If you speak to your 
friend as you ought to speak to your audience, your friend 
will say that you are stilted. Why ? Because you must 
articulate with care and put your voice out, away from 
you, in order to make the audience hear. Edwin Booth 
will whisper so that two thousand persons can hear and 
understand. How does he do it ? By perfect articula- 
tion, and by sending the voice out into the auditorium. 
If there are those who say that there is no such thing as 
" sending the voice out," I answer : Stand in one end of a 
room fifty feet long. Try to make your voice go to the 
opposite wall, not by shouting, but by actually putting the 
voice there. There is something in it, call it by what 
name you please. Certainly the effect can be produced. 

Coquelin, the famous French actor, in an address before 
the students of Harvard University, said : — 

"How can an actor hope to be understood if he stammers and 
sputters ; if he drowns all the author's points, all his delicacies, and 



26 READING AND SPEAKING. 

all his strong passages, in the same lukewarm, monotonous, and color- 
less delivery ? But naturalness, some one will object — must not the 
actor speak naturally? Oh! do not talk to me about the naturalness 
of those who do not articulate; who recite in a conversational tone; 
who mistake the stage for a drawing-room ; who chat in presence of 
the public as they would in presence of two or three friends. . . . The 
stage is not a drawing-room. You cannot address fifteen hundred 
spectators in a theatre as you would address a few companions at the 
fireside. If the tone is not raised you will not be heard ; and if you 
do not articulate, the public will be unable to follow you." 

Write " speaker" for " actor," and " platform " or <f ros- 
trum " for " stage," and the words of M. Coquelin apply 
to public speakers. But does this famous comedian prac- 
tice what he preaches ? Mr. Brander Matthews says of 
him : — 

" M. Coquelin is a master of diction, as the French call it ; of deliv- 
ery, of the art of speech, as we must call it. He has a faculty of in- 
describable volubility; but, despite the utmost rapidity of utterance, 
he is always clearly and distinctly audible in all parts of the theatre." 

Speaking of conversational articulation reminds me of 
a little story. A French gentleman, calling upon the poet 
Longfellow, in the course of conversation complained of 
some of the difficulties of the English language. 

" For eenstance," said he, " I hear continual ze vord 
* zattledoo,' but no one can tell me eets meaning ; no one 
recognize eet ; eet ees note een ze dictionaire. Vat ees 
zat vord ? " 

The poet admitted that the word was new to him also. 
Just then a servant came in with coal for the grate. 

" That'll do," said Mr. Longfellow, when enough had 
been put on. 

" Zat ees ze vord ! " exclaimed the Frenchman, bound- 
ing from his chair. " Zat ees eet ! Zattledoo, zattledoo ! 
Vat ees zat eencomprehensible vord ?" 



GOOD ARTICULATION AND A NATURAL MANNER. 2J 

Now, if Mr. Longfellow had said with very careful articu- 
lation, • "That — will — do — Maria," the French gentle- 
man would not have recognized his tantalizing word. But 
Mr. Longfellow was talking as a gentleman talks by his 
fireside. It is not the way in which a gentleman should 
talk before an audience. 

I have spoken of Wendell Phillips, who is held up to 
young speakers as an unapproachable example of the 
natural style of public speaking. As has been truly said, 
he more than anybody else put an end, in this country, to 
pompous and stilted eloquence, and substituted a simpler 
style. I never heard him ; but I am always interested in 
learning how his speech impressed good judges of oratory. 
His biographer, Dr. Carlos Martyn, says: — 

"His enunciation was an added charm. Each word was as dis- 
tinctly uttered as though it were a newly coined gold piece. Yet he " 
never elocutionized ; there was nothing pedantic in his utterance. 
Like everything else about his oratory, it was natural, or seemed so. 
[The italics are mine.] In tone and manner, although thus conversa- 
tional, Mr. Phillips was at the same time elevated. It has been said 
that speaking which is merely conversational has no lift in it; the 
mind may be held by it, but is not impressed. On the other hand, 
speaking which has no everyday manner as its basis is stilted and 
fatiguing. The orator should frame his style on the level of plain, 
common-sense talk ; then this ought to lead out and up toward vistas 
of cloudland and the music of the spheres. In this regard Wendell 
Phillips was a model." 

Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, surely a competent 
critic, says : — 

" The keynote to the oratory of Wendell Phillips lay in this: that 
it was essentially conversational — the conversational raised to its 
highest power. Perhaps no orator ever spoke with so little apparent 
effort, or began so entirely on the plane of his average hearers. It was 
as if he simply repeated, in a little louder tone, what he had just been 



28 READING AND SPEAKING. 

saying to some familiar friend at his elbow. . . . The colloquialism 
was never relaxed, but it was familiarity without loss of dignity. Then, 
as the argument went on, the voice grew deeper, the action more ani- 
mated, and the sentences came in a long, sonorous swell, still easy 
and graceful, but powerful as the soft stretching of a tiger's paw." 1 

I have quoted thus to show that Wendell Phillips did 
not talk to an audience as he talked to his friend by the 
fireside. He was just as natural on the platform as in the 
study ; but he did not employ the fireside articulation, or 
force, or voice. He was never indistinct. 



SHALL WE LEARN TO READ AND SPEAK? 29 



CHAPTER V. 

SHALL WE LEARN TO READ AND SPEAK? 

I took pains to make thee speak. . Tempest. 

I pray, sir, can you read ? Can you read anything you see ? 

Romeo and Juliet. 

I am aware that there is widespread prejudice among 
persons of the greatest intelligence, — perhaps among 
scholars more than others, — against " learning to read 
or speak by rote," as they call it. They object strenu- 
ously to all the rules laid down by the elocutionists for the 
proper delivery of sentences. They laugh at the " elocu- 
tion books," with their many and intricate directions for 
delivering all kinds of speeches, from "grave to gay, from 
lively to severe." There is considerable cause for their 
opposition. Mr. Nathan Shepard, of whom I have spoken, 
voices this opposition thus : — 

"Inflection is to be left to the elocutionary instinct, to the ear for 
inflection. It is not to be learned from such a rule as this, for example, 
which I find in one of the books of elocution. 

" ' Rule I. Whenever the sense of a sentence, or clause of a 
sentence, is as yet incomplete or suspended, then the rising inflection 
is to be used.' 

" Another of the rules of the elocutionist is : ' Pause before and after 
the emphatic word, and put a circumflex on it. 1 

"Where did you get this rule? From conversation. Finding that 
we do this naturally, let us do it mechanically. We do it by instinct in 
private talking, let us do it by rule in public speaking. Finding that 
while eating, every time your elbow bends your mouth flies open, there- 
fore this rule : When your elbow bends, open your mouth. Nonsense ! 
Leave the pauses, emphasis, and circumflex where you found them, and 



30 READING AND SPEAKING. 

cultivate the ear for pauses, emphasis, and circumflex. If you deprive 
the speaker of his pauses and emphasis and inflections, what is left 
for his brains? " 

That sounds forcible, and seems to smack of common- 
sense. I do not propose to enter into an argument on the 
subject. Elocution is not one of the exact sciences. But 
men can be taught to speak well. No man can be taught 
to be an orator, unless he has the oratorical instinct ; but 
many a man has discovered that he has the oratorical 
instinct, much to his friends' surprise, while going through 
the drudgery of school or college required work in elocu- 
tion. This work has often been precisely on those lines at 
which Mr. Shepard has sneered. For how is one to 
" cultivate the ear for pauses, emphasis, and inflection, ,, 
unless he has something to guide him ; something to tell 
him when he is making proper pauses, emphasizing the 
word he thinks he is emphasizing, giving the correct 
inflection ? 

But, it is said, these rules are based on what a speaker 
does naturally in conversation. True. But if speakers 
spoke as naturally as they converse, there would be no 
need even for Mr. Shepard's admirable book. Hear the 
Junior telling a group of girls how his college team won 
the last foot-ball match, or how his college eight won the 
boat-race. How naturally he speaks ! What correct 
emphasis and inflection ! What graceful and appropriate 
gestures ! Listen to that same young man delivering his 
oration before the college. Where is his naturalness now? 
Hear him tear a passion to tatters. See him saw the air 
with his hands. Or try to hear him as he mumbles and 
mutters, standing as stiff as a graven image, while one 
embarrassed hand plucks at the seam of his trousers, and 
the other strives to pull down the cuff above it. 



SHALL WE LEARN TO READ AND SPEAK? 3 1 

It is just because young speakers do not read naturally, 
do not speak naturally without help, without instruction, 
without practicing on certain well-defined lines, calculated 
to give naturalness, that I mourn when I read and hear 
such attacks as Mr. Shepard's on approved and well- 
considered methods of elocutionary instruction. As I 
have said, my only object in preparing this book is to aid 
those who wish to become public speakers, — who wish to 
acquire an easy, natural, forcible, distinct habit of speech. 
My object is not to make dramatic readers, or " reciters," 
or declaimers. I believe, with Emerson, that 

" if there ever was a country where eloquence was a power, it is in the 
United States. Here is room for every degree of it, on every one of 
its ascending stages, — that of useful speech in our commercial, manu- 
facturing, railroad, and educational conventions ; that of political advice 
and persuasion on the grandest theatre, reaching, as all good men 
trust, into a vast future, and so compelling the best thought and noblest 
administrative ability that the citizen can offer. And here are the 
services of science, the demands of art, and the lessons of religion, to 
be brought home to the instant practice of thirty [sixty] millions of 
people. Is it not worth the ambition of every generous youth to train 
and arm his mind with all the resources of knowledge, of method, of 
grace, and of character, to serve such a constituency?" 

Yes, a thousand times yes ! And it is worth his am- 
bition to train the body, the speech, that he may fitly 
present the fruits of that well-trained mind to that magnifi- 
cent constituency. I speak from experience when I say 
that I know that the directions contained in the following 
chapters will amply repay study. They are based on 
Walker's theory, as developed by Mandeville. I have 
endeavored to simplify the latter's method, and to give 
just as few rules as possible, and those of the most general 
character. Under the rules for the delivery of sentences, 



32 READING AND SPEAKING. 

I have devoted much space to examples of the different 
kinds of sentences. I do this that you may be thus led to 
practice a great deal, — to make many applications of the 
rules. You will be pleased to see how soon the rules will 
drop into the mind, and remain there ready for application. 
With moderate practice you will soon learn to classify a 
sentence at sight, and read it correctly — that is, as far as 
the inflections go. No one should suppose that any system 
of teaching will supply the intelligence, the insight, the 
oratorical instinct, that go to make the good reader or 
speaker. But if you have them, this method will certainly 
aid in developing them. 

I can do no better, I am sure, than to put before you 
here some of the words of John Quincy Adams, spoken 
when he was Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard 
College in 1806. He was replying to "Some Objections 
against Eloquence," and what he says about rhetoric 
certainly applies to elocution. 

"Rhetoric," he said, "can never constitute an orator. No human 
art can be acquired by the mere knowledge of the principles upon 
which it is founded. But the artist, who understands its principles, 
will exercise his art in the highest perfection. The profoundest study 
of the writers upon architecture, the most laborious contemplation of 
its magnificent monuments, will never make a mason. But the mason 
thoroughly acquainted with the writers, and familiar to the construction 
of those monuments, will surely be an abler artist than the mere 
mechanic, ignorant of the mysteries of his trade and even of the names 
of his tools." 

Further on he said: " The idea that the purpose of rhetoric is only 
to teach the art of making and delivering a holiday declamation pro- 
ceeds from a view of the subject equally erroneous and superficial. . . . 
Perhaps one of the causes of this mistaken estimate of the art is the 
usual process by which it is learnt. The exercises of the student are 
necessarily confined to the lowest department of the science. Your 
weekly declamations, your occasional themes . . . and orations of the 



SHALL WE LEARN TO READ AND SPEAK ? 33 

public exhibitions, from the nature of things, must relate merely to 
speculative subjects. Here is no issue for trial, in which the life or 
fortune of an individual may be involved ; here is no vote to be taken 
upon which the destinies of a nation may be suspended ; here is no 
immortal soul whose future blessedness or misery may hinge upon 
your powers of eloquence to convey conviction to the heart ; but here 
it is, that you must prepare yourselves to act your part in those great 
realities of life. To consider the lessons or the practices, by which 
the art of oratory can be learnt, as the substance of the art itself, is to 
mistake the means for the end. It is to measure the military merits of 
a general by the gold threads of his epaulette, or to appreciate the 
valor of the soldier by the burning of powder upon a parade. 

" The eloquence of the college is like the discipline of a review. 
The art of war, we are all sensible, does not consist in the manoeuvres 
of a training day ; nor the steadfastness of the soldier at the hour of 
battle in the drilling of his orderly sergeant. Yet the superior excel- 
lence of the veteran army is exemplified in nothing more forcibly than 
in the perfection of its discipline. It is in the heat of action, upon the 
field of blood, that the fortune of the day may be decided by the 
exactness of the manual exercise ; and the art of displaying a column, 
or directing a charge, may turn the balance of victory and change the 
history of the world. The application of these observations is as direct 
to the art of oratory as to the art of war. The exercises to which you 
are here accustomed are not intended merely for the display of the 
talents you have acquired. They are instruments put into your hands 
for future use. Their object is not barely to prepare you for the com- 
position and delivery of an oration to amuse an idle hour on some 
public anniversary : it is to give you a clue for the labyrinth of legisla- 
tion in the public councils ; a spear for the conflict of judicial war in 
the public tribunals ; a sword for the field of religious and moral victory 
in the pulpit." 

Dr. William M. Taylor, the well-known and eloquent 
clergyman, in a paper on " The Essentials of Eloquence," 
published in The New Princeton Review of March, 1887, 
— an article well worth reading and re-reading, — wrote : 

• ' We are forced to conclude that we must seek for the essentials of 
eloquence mainly in that spirit which gains its object, even where the 



34 READING AND SPEAKING. 

matter and the manner are comparatively neglected or disregarded. 
But while we make that admission, we are very far indeed from alleging 
that these other things are of no importance whatever. Because they 
are not the essence of eloquence, it does not by any means follow that 
they have nothing to do with it. On the contrary, if, without regard 
to them, certain men have produced such astounding effects by their 
words, we may well ask how much more they might have accomplished 
if they had been thoroughly trained in logic, rhetoric, and elocution, so 
as to have been able to call up at will, and, as it were, automatically, 
all the advantages which thorough discipline in their departments, at 
the proper stage in their development, would have secured. Just here, 
indeed, comes in the benefit of preliminary training in the departments 
of logic, rhetoric, and elocution, before one enters upon the career 
either of the minister, the statesman, or the barrister. It gives oppor- 
tunity for the cultivation of those things which may make true elo- 
quence more effective, and the absence of which may mar the force of 
what otherwise would be the most successful oratory ; and it does this 
at a time when the mastery of them may become so thorough, so much 
a part of the man himself, that he will act upon them with the uncon- 
sciousness that is characteristic of habit. 

" « How can people remember to turn out their toes at every step all 
their lives ? ' was the question of a little fellow to his mother, when she 
was seeking to impress upon him the duty of attending to his 'walk' ; 
and he had to be told that they do not remember, but that they get into 
such a strong habit of doing what she recommended that it would be 
unnatural for them to do otherwise. But it is quite similar in matters 
of more importance ; so it is only when the student is caught early 
enough, and trained thoroughly enough, that the right matter and the 
right manner of discourse will become habitual with him ; and he will 
be able to use all the finest qualities of style, and all the best graces of 
elocution, unconsciously, and as matters of course ; and it is only then 
that they will be of the highest service to him. 11 

Again, Dr. Taylor says : — 

" If we desired to prepare a young man for doing effective service 
as a speaker, we should take care that while he is yet in this formative 
stage, and, so to speak, in the gristle, with his habits yet to be acquired, 
he should be committed to the care of a wise teacher to learn the arts 
of reasoning and composition ; and, if possible, to that of a still wiser 



SHALL WE LEARN TO READ AND SPEAK? 35 

teacher [mark the words !] to take lessons in elocution. Dr. Thomas 
Guthrie tells us that during his student life in Edinburgh he attended 
elocution classes winter after winter, walking across half the city and 
more, fair night and foul, and not getting back to his lodging till about 
half-past ten. There he learned to find out and correct many acquired 
and more or less awkward defects in gesture ; to be, in fact, natural 
[what's this, — learn to be natural 7]; to acquire a command over 
his voice so as to suit its force and emphasis to the sense, and to 
modulate it so as to express the feelings, whether of surprise or grief, 
or indignation or pity. Thus these acquirements became part and 
parcel of himself. He used them with just as little consciousness of 
deliberate purpose and intention at the moment as one uses his limbs 
in walking or his tongue in articulation ; and every one who listened to 
his sermons from the pulpit, or his speeches from the platform, will 
attest that they lent a charm even to his eloquence." 

One more bit of testimony before going on with the 
work. I want you to read the following words of my dear 
friend and former teacher, the Rev. Anson J. Upson, D.D., 
Vice-Chancellor of the University of the State of New 
York. They are published in The Homiletic Review of 
March, 1890, in an article entitled "Rhetorical Training 
for the Pulpit." Speaking of Walker's theory of sentential 
structure he says : — 

"In 1845 D r - Henry Mandeville, then Professor of Rhetoric in 
Hamilton College [Dr. Upson was his successor], published a much 
more elaborate work, giving a more complete classification of sen- 
tences, and many rules for the application of the principle that struc- 
ture controls delivery. His work has not been adopted generally as 
a text-book, and its author did not gain as wide a reputation as he 
deserved. His technical terms and clumsy forms of expression may 
have repelled some teachers and students. The book is bulky. His 
whole system, with necessary rules and examples, might have been 
condensed into a primer. He multiplied examples to prove the truth 
of his principle, — which he certainly established, — when he might have 
contented himself with a number sufficient for illustration and practice. 
Yet the use of his system has given to Hamilton College a national 
reputation. Its use has made the college not a ' school of oratory, 1 so 



7,6 READING AND SPEAKING. 

called, making its scholars too often stilted, theatrical, unnatural, but 
a school for speakers. At one time four graduates of Hamilton were 
professors of homiletics in Presbyterian seminaries. Three of them 
were Dr. Eeles of Lane, Dr. Hastings of Union, and Dr. Herrick 
Johnson of McCormick Seminary. [Dr. Upson himself was the fourth, 
at Auburn ; and a fifth, the Rev. Arthur S. Hoyt, has just been called 
to a similar chair.] 

" No one can adopt and be carefully trained in Dr. MandevihVs 
system, and not be led into a style of public speech natural to himself. 
Dr. Mandeville's rules are so far from being unnatural, that they are a 
classification of the vocal movements and inflections used habitually in 
conversation. These are always controlled by sentential structure. 
Listening to conversation of no personal interest to myself, I have often 
rapidly analyzed the sentences of the conversationists, and have found 
invariably that the sentences of a similar class were uttered by the 
speakers in the same way ; their inflections and vocal movements 
were, unconsciously, ' according to Mandeville.' The prevailing char- 
acteristic of true public speaking is undoubtedly 'the conversational.' 
Perhaps no chapter in the New Testament is written in a more conver- 
sational style than the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. Analyse 
and read that chapter according to the rules of Dr. Mandeville's 
system, and the late Dr. Daniel Poor, missionary to Ceylon, one of 
the best readers of the Bible I ever heard, could not have read it bet- 
ter. The brilliant sermons of Henry Melville were delivered in a 
monotone. The uniform structure of his sentences made his monot- 
onous delivery inevitable. As a speaker, Wendell Phillips surpassed, 
no doubt, all other Americans in recent years. His style of speaking 
was remarkably conversational, ' natural, 1 largely because the structure 
of his sentences had the variety and the brevity and the directness of 
ordinary conversation. 

" No matter how far any reader or speaker may have wandered away 
from ' Nature, the dear old nurse, 1 the practice of Dr. Mandeville's 
system will bring him back. If all this can be done in restoring to the 
standard of nature so many who have departed from it, how shameful 
it is that many of those who need this training most are preaching to 
us continually a gospel of despair ; contemptuously glorying in their 
shame 1 " 



VOCAL INFLECTIONS, 37 



CHAPTER VI. 

VOCAL INFLECTIONS. SENTENCES AND THEIR 
DELIVERY. 

I speak as my understanding instructs me. The Winter's Tale. 
That every one may read. King Henry VI. 

To begin with, it is necessary to have a nomenclature. 
First, for the vocal inflections, or variations from the key. 

By key, I mean the predominating pitch or tone of the 
voice. Enough has been said to show that the predom- 
inating tone ought not to be unusually high, or unusually 
low. You ought by this time to have acquired the habit of 
pitching your voice in medium key. Speaking on such a 
key, you can easily go higher or lower, as the nature of 
the speech requires. You can also easily give decided in- 
flections, which add greatly to ease in articulation, and in 
general distinctness of utterance. 

Vocal Inflections. 

There are four general variations from the key, whicn 
we will call the Sweeps, the Slides, the Bend, and the Falls. 

The Sweeps are those movements of the voice preceding and fol- 
lowing that application of stress to a word, which we call empha- 
sis. To prepare for the application of this stress, the voice rises 
above the key to the emphatic word, or, if it have more than one 
syllable, to its accented syllable. This upward movement we will 
call the First Sweep. As a result of the application of the stress, 
the voice is carried below the key and then back to it. This move- 
ment is called the Second Sweep. 



38 READING AND SPEAKING. 

Take this sentence, "As a result of the application of 
this stress, the voice is carried below the key," etc., em- 
phasizing "application." If you think of the key as being 
the line made by the printed words, you will see that the 
voice falls a little after the first word, but the general 
movement is upward to the accented syllable of " applica- 
tion " ; then it goes downward below the key, and then 
back to it or a little above it at the end of the word 
"stress." Thus : 

r As a /-« u of the apv^ 1 ca tl °n s ' ,the vo ice,etc. 

Key. -result y of this s ^ eS 

The following lines will roughly represent the Sweeps : 

2d 

Key. — , 

When both of the Sweeps are developed on one word, 
we call this inflection the Circumflex. 

The vocal effects of emphasis will be further spoken 
of in another chapter. 

The Slides. 

There are two Slides, the Upward and the Downward. 

The Upward Slide carries the voice upward through a succession 
of tones, suspending it at the highest. 

Usually this Slide begins below the key. Thus : 



•<& 



^- 



K0 . .^L 



Nt' 



;ef 



VOCAL INFLECTIONS. 39 

The Downward Slide carries the voice downward through a suc- 
cession of tones, suspending it at the lowest. 

Usually this Slide begins quite above the key. Thus : — 

Key. -*Vo ----. 

The Bend is a slight upward turn of the voice, usually at a 
pause of imperfect sense. 

It will be indicated by the acute accent ; thus : — 
" The bend' is a slight upward turn of the voice', usually'," etc. 

There are two Falls, the Partial Fall and the Perfect 
Fall. 

The Partial Fall, represented by the grave accent ( v ), is a slight 
fall of the voice at an intermediate pause of complete sense. 

It indicates, by its nature, that the sentence is not com- 
plete ; although, standing alone, the proposition which it 
closes might make good sense. The sentence that I have 
just written illustrates this. There should be a Partial Fall 
of the voice at " complete." 

The Perfect Fall is that complete and satisfactory fall of the 
voice, quite below the key, which indicates the end of a sentence. 

It should be even more marked at the end of a paragraph. 

Much poor reading and speaking result from the use of 
the Perfect Fall at the end of every proposition which 
takes a downward inflection. The result is an indescriba- 
bly heavy and monotonous style, quite as bad as the indis- 
criminate use of the Bend, which some speakers affect : 
never letting the voice fall from the beginning to the end 



40 READING AND SPEAKING. 

of a sentence, whatever its character, and often not even 
letting the voice fall then. 

Sentences and their Delivery. 

John Walker, the lexicographer, was the first, I believe, 
to advance the theory that sentences might be classified, 
and rules formulated for the delivery of each class. You 
have read what Dr. Upson says of Dr. Mandeville's devel- 
opment of Walker's theory. In the following pages I 
have endeavored to abridge and considerably simplify the 
rules laid down in Mandeville's " Elements of Reading 
and Oratory." 

A Proposition is a series of words expressing a complete thought. 

A Proposition is either Absolute or Conditional. 

Examples of the Absolute. 

i. No act indicates more universal health than eloquence. 

2. Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. 

3. It is said that one of the best readers of his time was John 
Ouincy Adams. 

4. I have heard that no man could read the Bible with such power- 
ful effect. 

Examples of the Conditional. 

1 . When the thing that a man does is so completely mastered that 
he does it without knowing it, he does it easily. 

2. When he rose, every sound was hushed. 

3. If he confess it, then forgive him. 

A Sentence consists of a single proposition, or of two or more 
distinct though related propositions. 

Sentences, in their structure, are either Close, Loose, 
or Compact ; and as such are either Declarative, Interroga- 
tive, or Exclamatory. 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 41 

Declarative sentences declare or state something, affirm- 
atively or negatively. 

Interrogative sentences contain questions. 

Exclamatory sentences express more than ordinary emo- 
tion or passion. 

In the following discussion of Close, Loose, and Com- 
pact sentences, the Declarative form only will be consid- 
ered. Interrogative and Exclamatory sentences will be 
considered hereafter. 

The Close Sentence. 
The Close consists of a single absolute proposition. 

As a proposition is a series of words expressing a 
complete thought, and as it is natural to sustain the 
voice until the thought has been expressed, therefore we 
have this 

Rule for the Delivery of the Close. 

A Close sentence is delivered with the bend at intermediate 
pauses and perfect fall at the end. 

Examples. 

1. Enthusiasm of communication on a present theme', to present 
hearers', is the power of moment in public speech. 

2. The first thing requisite to a genuine energy of speech', is the 
possession and the mastery of materials' which demand energy of 
speech. 

3. A natural style requires a just, temperate, manly appreciation, on 
the speaker's part, of his own personal relations to the truth he utters. 

4. The most successful speakers have always been the most consid- 
erate students of the condition of their audiences. 

5. I have heard an eminent preacher say, that he learns from the 
first tones of his voice on a Sunday morning whether he is to have a 
successful day. 



42 READING AND SPEAKING. 

Let it be remembered that however long the sentence, 
however many subjects, verbs, objects, prepositional 
clauses, participial clauses, adverbial clauses, relative 
clauses, it may have ; as long as there is but one propo- 
sition expressed, it is a Close sentence, and all inter- 
mediate clauses take the Bend. Take for example this 
sentence from Rufus Choate's " Eulogy on Daniel Web- 
ster " : — 

" The same high power of reason', intent in every one to explore 
and display some truth' ; some truth of judicial, or historical, or bio- 
graphical fact' ; some truth of law, deduced by construction perhaps, 
or by illation' ; some truth of policy, for want whereof a nation, gen- 
erations, may be the worse, — reason seeking and unfolding truth' ; the 
same tone, in all, of deep earnestness, expressive of strong desire that 
that which he felt to be important should be accepted as true', and 
spring up to action' ; the same transparent, plain, forcible, and direct 
speech', conveying his exact thought to the mind', — not something less 
or more' ; the same sovereignty of form, of brow, and eye, and tone, 
and manner', — everywhere the intellectual king of men, standing 
before you' ; that same marvellousness of qualities and results', residing, 
I know not where', in words, in pictures, in the ordering of ideas', in 
felicities indescribable', by means whereof, coming from his tongue, all 
things seemed mended', truth seemed more true', probability more 
plausible', greatness more grand', goodness more awful', every affection 
more tender than when coming from other tongues'; — these are', in 
all', his eloquence." 

Now, it seems very inadequate to say that the proper 
delivery of such a sentence is with the Bend at inter- 
mediate pauses and Perfect Fall. It is inadequate ; for 
nothing is said of the emphasis, of the modulation of the 
voice, of the inflections that should be used. Nothing is 
said of the intelligence which must direct the reader. But 
if the student has learned that even such a sentence as 
this should be read without fall of the voice other than 
that which belongs to emphasis ; if he has learned to pass a 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 43 

semicolon or a colon without fall of the voice, he has 
learned something which a good many persons who think 
that they can read have not learned. 

And yet it by no means follows that because any 
teacher, or any system, says that such a sentence should 
be read in such a manner, that there is no appeal from 
that decision. Elocution, as I have said, is not an exact 
science. How any sentence should be read is largely a 
matter of judgment, of taste. No theory should be fol- 
lowed blindly. If a careful study of this system leads you 
to differ from it in any particular, your time will not have 
been lost ; nor mine. For the fact that you differ from it 
shows that you have studied ; that you have brought your 
intelligence to bear on the subject : and that, above all 
things, is what the teacher ought to desire. That, indeed, 
is the ultimate aim of this work. 

Read the following examples. The first is from 
Choate : — 

" That vast panorama unrolled by our general history, or unrolling; 
that eulogy, so just, so fervent, so splendid, so approved ; that electric, 
seasonable memory of Washington ; that purchase and that dedication 
of the dwelling and the tomb, — the work of woman, and of the orator 
of the age ; that record of his generals, that visit to battle-fields ; that 
reverent wiping away of dust from great urns ; that speculation, that 
dream of her present, past, and future ; every ship builded on lake or 
ocean ; every treaty concluded ; every acre of territory annexed ; every 
cannon cast ; every machine invented ; every mile of new railroad 
and telegraph undertaken ; every dollar added to the aggregate of the 
national or individual wealth; — these all, as subjects of thought, as 
motives of pride and care, as teachers of wisdom, as agencies for prob- 
able good, may work, may insure that earthly immortality of love and 
glory for which this celebration was ordained." 

" The hills, 
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 



44 READING AND SPEAKING. 

The venerable woods ; rivers that move 

In majesty ; and the complaining brooks 

That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 

Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 

Are but the solemn decorations all 

Of the great tomb of man.'" 

" This royal throne of kings ; this sceptered isle; 
This earth of majesty ; this seat of Mars ; 
This other Eden, demi-paradise ; 
This fortress, built by Nature for herself, 
Against infection, and the hand of war ; 
This precious stone, set in the silver sea, 
Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 
Against the envy of less happy lands ; 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England ; 
This land of such dear souls ; this dear dear land ; 
Dear for her reputation, through the world, — 
Is now leased out, (I die pronouncing it,) 
Like to a tenement or paltry farm.'" 

Exception I. 

Sometimes, when a Close sentence contains a series of members 
preceding the predicate, the last of the series may be delivered with 
the Partial Fall. 

This is often the best reading when the member imme- 
diately preceding the predicate is a sort of summing up of 
all that goes before. For example : — 

"On the banks of the Indus' ; in the fertile valleys of the Euphrates' ; 
under the shadow of the mighty Pyramids, and along the borders of 
the Nile' ; in frigid Russia, and in sunny Greece ' ; under the soft skies 
of Italy and of Spain' ; among the mountain fastnesses of Switzerland' ; 
along the slopes where the grapes are gathered and the herds are 
pastured in beautiful France' ; behind the dykes of Holland' ; over the 
plains and amid the forests of Germany' ; far north in the Scandinavian 
retreats, where muscle is trained by hardship, and storms nurture the 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 45 

courage to do and dare' ; within the sea-girt isle, whose sceptre of 
authority has been wielded by an Alfred, by a William the Conqueror, 
by an Elizabeth, and by a Victoria' ; up in the Highlands, where 
Bruce and Wallace led their clans, and Burns sung songs as enduring 
as Homer's, and Scott waved his wizard wand'; in Ireland, where the 
echoes of the voice of O'Connell still linger in the air, persuasive, 
potential, and the name of Robert Emmet stirs like a bugle call' ; here 
in this broad land of America' ; — everywhere \ of whatever race or 
clime\ man feels himself to be hindered, cramped, thwarted, cruelly 
wronged, without Liberty." 

Exception II. 

When the members of a Close sentence contain antithetical 
clauses, each member, except the last, may terminate with Partial 
Fall. 

Example. 

" From the worm that grovels in the dust beneath our feet', to the 
track of the leviathan in the foaming deep v ; from the moth that cor- 
rupts the secret treasure', to the eagle that soars above his aerie in the 
clouds v ; from the wild ass in the desert, to the lamb within the 
shepherd's fold ; from the consuming beast, to the cattle upon a 
thousand hills ; from the rose of Sharon, to the cedar of Lebanon ; 
from the crystal stream, gushing out of the flinty rock, to the wide 
waters of the deluge ; from the lonely path of the wanderer, to the 
gathering of a mighty multitude ; from the tear that falLs in secret, to 
the din of battle and the shout of a triumphant host ; from the solitary 
in the wilderness, to the satrap on the throne ; from the mourner, clad 
in sackcloth, to the prince in purple robes ; from the gnawings of the 
worm that dieth not, to the seraphic visions of the blessed ; from the 
still small voice, to the thunders of omnipotence ; from the depths of 
hell, to the regions of eternal glory' — there is no degree of beauty or 
deformity\ no tendency to good or evil\ no shadow of darkness, nor 
gleam of light', which does not come within the cognizance of the Holy 
Scriptures." 

I have said that the delivery of such sentences, as these 
given under the Exceptions, may depart from the rule. 



46 READING AND SPEAKING. 

The reader by careful study should decide which method 
of delivery will best realize the idea of the writer. 

The Loose Sentence. 

A Loose sentence consists of two or more distinct though related 
propositions, with connectives expressed or understood. 

The members of a Loose sentence may themselves be 
Close or Compact in structure, and will therefore conform 
to the delivery of such sentences. The members are not 
necessarily complete in structure, but may be fragmentary, 
requiring to be completed in thought from what precedes. 
Each member of a Loose sentence, whether perfect or 
imperfect, should contain a single proposition ; should 
express a complete thought. 

Note. — It seems proper to place among the Loose sentences those con- 
structed like the following : — 

1 . The case is simply this : Shall the Legislature do as it pleases ? 

2. I want to see on the banner that other sentiment, dear to every 
true American heart : Liberty and Union ; One and Inseparable ; Now 
and Forever. 

3. The gentleman then spoke as follows : I am not sure, sir, etc. 

Although in such sentences the first members are not 
complete propositions, do not express complete thoughts, 
still it seems best to classify them as Loose sentences, 
because they are conventionally delivered as such. 

Rule for the Delivery of the Loose. 

The members of a Loose sentence should have the Bend at inter- 
mediate pauses, and should each terminate with Partial Fall, ex- 
cept the last, which has Perfect Fall. Each succeeding member 
should be delivered in a slightly lower key, where the nature of 
the sentence permits it. 



sentences and their delivery. 47 

Examples. 

1. I think that oratory', with the exception of here and there an 
instance which is supposed to be natural', is looked upon', if not with 
contempt', at least with discredit', as a thing artificial^ ; as a mere 
science of ornamentation N ; as a method fit for actors', who are not 
supposed to express their own sentiments', but unfit for a living man' 
who has earnestness and sincerity and purpose. 

2. Patriotism, when it rises to the heroic standard, is a positive 
love of country ; and it will do all and sacrifice all which it is in the 
nature of love to do and to sacrifice for its object. 

3. It is heroic only when it is lifted to the elevation of the ideal; 
when it is so hallowed by the affections, and glorified by the imagina- 
tion, that the whole being of the man is thrilled and moved by its in- 
spiration ; and drudgery becomes beautiful, and suffering noble, and 

" death sweet, in the country's service. 

Compact Sentences. 

Compact sentences are distinguished by having parts introduced 
by correlative words, expressed or understood. 

The correlatives which most frequently occur are, such 

— as; so — as; so — that; if — then ; if — yet; though — 
yet ; imless — then ; where — there ; either — or ; neither 

— nor; whether — or; although — nevertheless; indeed — 
but; therefore — because, for, since ; ratJier — than ; and the 
like. 

There are two kinds of Compact sentences, Single and 
Negative. 

The Single Compact consists of two parts, with correlative 
words expressed or understood. 

Conditional propositions are almost invariably Single 
Compacts. 

Examples. 

(Both correlatives expressed.) When a great sentiment, as religion 
or liberty, makes itself deeply felt in any age or country, then great 
orators appear. 



45 READING AND SPEAKING. 

(One correlative expressed.) If ever there was a Christian soldier, 
in the fullest and freest acceptation of the term, General Charles Gor- 
don was one. 

(Neither correlative expressed.) Affected passion, intense expres- 
sion, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it ; they cannot 
reach it. 

Not infrequently the correlatives are brought together. 
For example : "Rather than submit, they will suffer " — i.e.., 
" Rather will they suffer than submit." 

The first part of a Single Compact may itself be either 
Close or Compact in construction ; and the second part 
Close, Loose, or Compact. Thus each part may have 
several members, which are themselves delivered according 
to the rules governing the classes to which they belong. 
We have this very general 

Rule for the Delivery of the Single Compact. 

The first part and the members of the first part of a Single 
Compact terminate with the Bend. The second part and the 
members of the second part terminate with Partial and Perfect Fall, 
like the Loose. 

Examples. 

i. If I should make the shortest list of the qualifications of the 
orator', I should begin with " manliness." 

2. As soon as a man shows rare power of expression, like Chatham, 
Erskine, Patrick Henry, Webster, or Phillips', all great interests crowd 
to him to be their spokesman. 

3. He spoke with consummate ability to the bench ; and yet exactly 
as, according to every sound canon of taste and ethics, the bench 
ought to be addressed. 

4. When President Lincoln was once inquired of what was the 
secret of his success as a popular debater, he replied, " I always assume 
that my audience is in many things wiser than I am, and I say the 
most sensible thing I can to them." 



sentences and their delivery. 49 

Exceptions to the Rule for the Delivery of 
Single Compacts. 

I. The last member of a series in the first part may be de- 
livered with Partial Fall, for the sake of variety. 

II. If the last member of a series in the first part contains an 
intensive particle, it should be delivered with Partial Fall. 

Thus : — 

Though they lost the esteem of the world' ; though their nearest 
and dearest relatives forsook them' ; nay, though even the sanctuary of 
life itself was invaded v ; yet they held to their faith unshaken ; met all ; 
endured all. 

III. If a Single Compact in its first part has two members in 
contrast, the second member may terminate with Partial Fall. 

For example : — 

If a good man has injured you', if a bad man has injured you\ it is 
all the same ; you must forgive. 

IV. If the first parts of two Single Compacts, in immediate 
connection, express contrasted thoughts, the second first part may 
terminate with Partial Fall. 

For example : — 

[His style is always beautiful.] If clear', you are pleased with him ; 
if he is obscure\ you are pleased with him. 

Often, when neither correlative is expressed, the Single 
Compact appears in form like the Close. Usually, how- 
ever, it is distinguished from the Close by having the sub- 
ject and verb transposed in one of the parts, and by having 
the correlation clearly implied. 

Examples. 

1. Had he [if he had] assisted me', [then] I would have done it. 

2. [Although] a professed Catholic', [yet] he imprisoned the pope. 



50 READING AND SPEAKING. 

3. Were it not for the impediments you speak of, I would pursue 
the course you advise. 

The Single Compact often has parts apparently making 
perfect sense, and is therefore, in structure, like the Loose ; 
but the clearly implied correlation should lead you to 
classify it correctly. 

Examples. 

1. The rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew 
and beat upon that house' ; and it fell. 

2. Here is a case in which the voice that cometh forth from the 
tribunal of public opinion pronounces one thing' ; and the voice that 
cometh forth from the sanctuary of God pronounces another. 

3. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, 
all may aspire after it' ; they cannot reach it. 

4. To the days of Marathon and Salamis it was given to put the 
shoulder to the wheel, and roll back the avalanche of Oriental tyranny 
and corruption, and save the germs of Western civilization from being 
crushed out of existence ; and to the days of Pericles to build monu- 
ments and sing paeans over the heroism and sacrifice of the fathers. 
It was given to the fathers of the Revolution to fight King George's 
redcoats on many an ensanguined plain ; and to us to make Fourth of 
July orations over them. It was given to the Pilgrim Fathers to plow 
and sow on the hard rock, in the biting December blast, until the 
surface of Burial Hill undulated with grave mounds, covering the forms 
of father, mother, and child ; and to us to eat sumptuous dinners in 
their behalf. 

The Negative Compact. 

The Negative Compact consists of four parts : the first always 
contains a negative statement; the second, beginning with "for" 
or "because," expressed or understood, gives a reason for the nega- 
tive statement; the third, often beginning with "but," contains 
an affirmation in opposition to, or contrast with the negative, or 
first part; and the fourth, often beginning with "for" or "be- 
cause," gives a reason for the affirmative statement, or the third 
part. 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 5 1 

Each part may consist of several members, as does the 
Single Compact. 

Rule for the Delivery of the Negative Compact. 

The first part, and the members of the first part, terminate like 
the first part of the Single Compact, — with the Bend; the other 
parts, and members of the other parts, like the members of a Loose 
sentence, — with Partial and Perfect Fall. 

Examples. 

i. {First part) It was not an eclipse that caused the darkness at 
the crucifixion of our Lord' ; {second part) for the sun and the moon 
were not relatively in a position to cause an eclipse v ; {third part) but 
a direct interposition of God v ; {fourth part) for on no other supposi- 
tion can we account for it. 

2. (ist) I shall not try to ascertain the motives that influenced the 
action' ; (2d) for I believe that such an effort would be useless^ ; (3d) 
but I shall endeavor to show the results of that action^ ; (4th) for they 
are what concern us. 

Exceptions. 

I. When the first part consists of a series of members, the last 
of the series may take the Partial Fall, as in Single Compacts. 

II. When "no" or "nay" ends a series of members in the 
first part, it should be delivered with the Bend, and the member 
immediately preceding it may take the Partial Fall. 

Examples. 

1. We pay no homage at the tombs of kings to sublime our feel- 
ings' ; we trace no line of illustrious ancestors to support our dignity' ; 
we recur to no usages, sanctioned by the authority of the great, to pro- 
tect our rejoicing v ; no' ; we love liberty ; we glory in the rights of men ; 
we glory in independence. 

2. No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these vil- 
lages' ; no civil discords have been felt' ; no religious rage' ; no merci- 
less enemy' ; no voracious and poisonous monsters v ; no' ; all this has 
been accomplished by the friendship, generosity, and kindness of the 
English nation. 



52 READING AND SPEAKING. 

1. Complete Negative Compacts are very rare. The 
most usual form has only the first and third parts ; the 
negative and affirmative statements being brought into 
immediate contrast. 

Examples. 

i. (ist) It was not enough for him to stand on the defensive ; (3d) 
he felt that he must become the assailant, and return blow for blow. 

2. Society in this country has not made its progress, like Chinese 
skill, by a greater acuteness of ingenuity in trifles ; it has not merely 
lashed itself to an increased speed around the old circles of thought 
and action ; but it has assumed a new character ; it has raised itself 
from beneath governments, to a participation in governments ; it has 
mixed moral and political objects with the daily pursuits of individual 
men ; and, with a freedom and strength before altogether unknown, 
it has applied to these objects the whole power of the human under- 
standing. 

3. I do not mean to wake the gloomy form 
Of superstition, dressed in wisdom's garb, 
To damp your tender hopes ; I do not mean 
To bid the jealous thunder fire the heavens, 
Or shapes infernal rend the groaning earth, 
To fright you from your joys ; my cheerful song, 
With better omens, calls you to the field, 
Pleased with your generous ardor in the chase, 
And warm, like you. 

4. [What constitutes a state?] 

Not high-raised battlement, or labored mound, 

Thick wall, or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 

Not starred and spangled courts, 
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride ; 

No : — men ; high-minded men, 
With powers as far above dull brutes endued 

In forest, brake, or den, 
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ; 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 53 

Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, 

Prevent the long-aimed blow, 
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain ; 

These constitute a state. 

Occasionally, when the first and third parts are thus in 
immediate contrast, they are transposed. Even then they 
should be delivered according to the rule : the first part 
with the bend ; the third part with the fall. 

Examples. 

1. (Third part) You were paid to fight against Alexander ; {first 
part) not to rail at him' ! 

2. They were asleep ; not alienated. 

3. We demand our liberty because it is an inalienable right ; not as 
a favor. 

II. The fourth part is sometimes omitted. 

1 . They had not come in search of gain, for the soil was sterile and 
unproductive ; but they had come that they might worship God accord- 
ing to the dictates of conscience. 

2. He does not satisfy himself with barely moving to a higher point 
in the scale of human attainment, and then sitting down, with the sen- 
timent that it is enough ; he never counts it enough ; the practical atti- 
tude of the believer is that of one who is ever looking forward ; the 
practical movement of the believer is that of one who is ever pressing 
forward. 

In negative compacts containing first, second, and third 
parts, very often the members of the second part are dis- 
tributed among the members of the first part. (You 
remember that the second part gives a reason for the first 
part.) 

Examples. 

1. (1st) It was not their rank which gave the apostles such marvel- 
ous success in spreading Christianity in every part of the Roman 



54 READING AND SPEAKING. 

empire', (2d) for they sprang from the lowest order of the people v ; 
(1st) it was not their wealth', (2d) for they were poor v ; (1st) it was 
not their learning', (2d) for they were unlettered men N ; (3d) but it was 
the miraculous powers with which they were endowed, and the wisdom 
of God, and the power of God unto salvation. 

2. I am not the panegyrist of England; I am not dazzled by her 
riches, nor awed by her power ; the sceptre, the mitre, and the coronet, 
stars, garters, and blue ribands, seem to me poor things for great men 
to contend for ; nor is my admiration awakened by her armies mustered 
for the battles of Europe, her navies overshadowing the ocean, nor her 
empire, grasping the farther East ; it is these, and the price of guilt 
and blood by which they are maintained, which are the cause why no 
friend of liberty can salute her with undivided affection ; but it is the 
refuge of free principles, though often persecuted ; it is the birthplace 
of our fathers ; the home of the Pilgrims : it is these which I love and 
venerate in England. 

III. The second part only is sometimes omitted. 

Examples. 

1. One should not thoughtlessly accept this theory; he should ex- 
amine it carefully; for there are those who think that it will repay 
study. 

2. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and 
rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ; but lay up for 
yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, 
and where thieves do not break through and steal; for where your 
treasure is, there will yo.ur heart be also. 

IV. The third and fourth parts are sometimes omitted, 
leaving simply the negative statement and the reason for 
it. 

Examples. 

1. Not all the chapters of human history are thus important; the 
annals of our race have been filled up with incidents which convey no 
instruction. 

2. I dare not come here and dismiss in a few summary paragraphs 
the character of one who has filled such a space in the history, one who 
holds such a place in the heart of his country ; it would be a disre- 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 55 

spectful familiarity to a man of his lofty spirit, his great soul, his rich 
endowments, his long and honorable life, to endeavor thus to weigh 
and estimate them. 

V. Sometimes the negative statement — the first part 
— stands alone. When it consists of a series of mem- 
bers, the last should have the Perfect Fall. 

Example. 

[And what is our Country?] It is not the East with her hills and 
valleys, with her countless sails, and the rocky ramparts of her shores ; 
it is not the North with her thousand villages, and her harvest home, 
with her frontier of lake and ocean ; it is not the West with her for- 
est sea and her inland isles, with her luxuriant expanses clothed in 
the verdant corn, with her beautiful Ohio, and her majestic Missouri ; 
nor is it yet the South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the 
rich plantations of the rustling cane, and the golden robes of the rice- 
field. 

Notice how in this sentence you feel that the negative 
statement ought to be followed by an affirmative in con- 
trast to it, — telling what your country is. It is this fact, 
that the negative sentence so often suggests the affirma- 
tive, which gives it its incomplete character, and leads us 
naturally to deliver it with the Bend. Indeed, some writers 
on elocution have laid down the rule that all negative 
thoughts should be delivered with the rising inflection. I 
think that the rule is too broad. It is only when the neg- 
ative suggests the opposite affirmative that it takes the 
rising inflection ; and then it is properly classed as a 
Negative Compact. 

VI. Sometimes the negative statement (the first part) 
is inserted as a clause in the affirmative (the third part). 

Then the first clause of the affirmative has the Partial Fall, and 
the negative clause and the succeeding portion of the affirmative 
take the Bend. 



56 reading and speaking. 

Examples. 

i. {Third part) Strong proofs\ {first part) not a loud voice', 
{third part) produce conviction'. 

2. His wisdom, not his talents, attracts attention. 

3. Ambition, and not the safety of the State, was concerned. 

Of course these come under the general law that gives 
to the negative statement the Bend, and to the affirmative 
the Fall. Notice that if the emphasis is taken from the 
contrasted clauses, and placed in the clause following 
the negative, the tendency is to close the sentence with 
the Fall. Emphasize "conviction," and not "proofs " and 
"voice," in the first example, and see the result. Then 
the sentence becomes a simple statement of what " strong 
proofs " produce. 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. S7 

CHAPTER VII. - 
SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. — Continued. 

Let me answer to the particular of the interrogatories. 

All's Well that Ends Well. 

How now! Interjections? Why, then, some be of laughing, 

as, ah ! ha ! he ! Much Ado About Nothing. 

Interrogatives are either Definite, Indefinite, Indirect, 
Double, or Semi-interrogative. 

The Definite is one that begins with a verb, and can be 
answered by "yes" or "no." It may be of Close, Com- 
pact, or Loose structure. 

Rule for the Delivery of the Definite 
Interrogative. 

The Definite, when composed of one short member, is delivered 
with the Upward Slide from beginning to end ; when the member 
is long, it should have the Upward Slide at the beginning, then a 
level tone, and end with a decided Upward Slide. When the sen- 
tence consists of a series of members, each member should be de- 
livered with the Upward Slide, thus modified, to suit its length. 
Each succeeding Upward Slide should begin and end a little higher 
than its predecessor. 

Thus there will be a general upward movement given 
to the whole sentence. This cannot always be com- 
pletely carried out in a very long sentence ; but the last 
Upward Slide should be more pronounced than the others. 

Examples. 

1. Will any man deny that ? 

2. Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free consent 
is the foundation rock of all our institutions ? 



58 READING AND SPEAKING. 

3. Is there a gentleman in this Chamber who will dare deny or take 
issue upon the assertion that more than one-third of the permanent 
legislation affecting or relating to the army of this government, as it 
stands upon the statute-books of your country to-day, has been put 
there as riders upon army appropriation bills ? 

4. Have you not told us again and again, that, while we were troub- 
ling ourselves so much about the negro question, the negro himself 
had every reason to feel happy and contented in the condition of 
slavery ; that he was well fed, well clothed, had but a moderate share 
of labor to perform, and no earthly cares upon him ; did you not always 
tell us so ? 

5. Has it not ever been your boast, your merit as a party, that you 
are in an intense and even characteristic degree, National and Unionist 
in your spirit and politics, although you had your origin in the asser- 
tion of State rights ; that you have contributed in a thousand ways to 
the extension of our territory, and the establishment of our martial 
fame ; and that you will follow the flag on whatever field or deck it 
waves ; and will you for the sake of temporary victory in a State, or 
for any other cause, insert an article in your creed, and give a direction 
to your tactics, which shall detach you from such companionship and 
unfit you for such service in all time to come? 

Exceptions to the Rule for the Definite. 
I. When the same Definite question is repeated, the repetition 
takes the Downward Slide, or the First Sweep to the emphatic 
word and the Downward Slide from it. 

Examples. 

1. Has the gentleman done ? Has he completely done? 

2. Shall we take the decisive step? I ask you, shall we take the 

decisive step? 

II. A series of Definite questions may have the last member 
delivered with the Downward Slide, or First Sweep and Downward 
Slide. 

Examples. 

1. Is he honest ? Is he faithful ? Is he capable ? 

2. Are all apostles ? Are all prophets ? Are all teachers ? Are 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 59 

all workers of miracles ? Have all the gifts of healing ? Do all speak 

with tongues ? Do all interpret ? 

3. Do you know me, sir ? Am I Dromio ? Am I your man ? Am 
I myself ? 

III. Often a sentence, apparently a Definite, is really an Exclam- 
atory sentence, — an emphatic statement of an undoubted fact. It 
is then delivered like a Close Declarative sentence. 

Examples. 

1. Is it possible that, from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy 
not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress 
so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so 
important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious ! 

2. When the African was first brought to these shores, would he 
have violated a solemn obligation by slipping his chain and flying back 
to his native land ? Would he not have been bound to seize the 
precious opportunity to escape ! 

The Indefinite Interrogative. 
The Indefinite is an interrogative that begins with an 
adverb or relative pronoun and cannot be answered by 
"yes " or "no." 

Rule for the Delivery of the Indefinite. 

The Indefinite Interrogative is delivered with the First Sweep 
to the emphatic word and the Downward Slide from it to the end ; 
unless another emphatic word intervenes, when the voice rises 
again to that emphatic word and then takes the Downward Slide. 

When the sentence is short, and the first word only is 
emphatic, the Indefinite is delivered with uninterrupted 
Downward Slide. When the sentence has members, each 
member is delivered according to the rule just given. If 
possible, each succeeding member should begin and end 
a little lower than the preceding one. At all events, the 
last Downward Slide should be the most pronounced. 



60 reading and speaking. 

Examples, 
i. Where is the promlseH fruit of his toils? 




4. How shall I attempt to enumerate the posts they filled and the 
trusts they discharged at home and abroad, both in the councils of 
their native States, and of the Confederation, both before and after the 
adoption of the Constitution ; the codes of law and the systems of 
government they aided in organizing ; the foreign embassies they sus- 
tained ; the alliances with foreign states they contracted when America 
was weak ; the loans and subsidies they procured from foreign powers 
when America was poor ; the treaties of peace and commerce which 
they negotiated ; their participation in the Federal Government ; their 
mutual possession of the confidence of the only man to whom his 
country accorded a higher place ; and their successive administrations- 
in-chief of the interests of this great Republic ? 

Exceptions. 

When the same Indefinite is repeated after an answer, or in the 
answer, the repeated Indefinite is delivered with the Upward Slide. 

Examples. 

1. Q. When will you finish my picture ? 
A. Next week. 

Q. When will you finish my picture ? 

2. [A plague upon all cowards, say I.] 

Q. What's the matter ? 

A. What's the matter ? Here be four of us have taken a thousand 
pounds this morning. 

Q. Where is it, Jack ; where is it ? 
A. Where is it ? Taken from us, it is. 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 6 1 

Sometimes, an Indefinite which is in its nature Exclama- 
tory is delivered with an upward turn of the voice at the 
end, — rather more pronounced than the Bend. For ex- 
ample : — 

Why do I suffer so many sorrows' ? 
How shall I ever look him in the face' ? 

The Indirect Interrogative. 

The Indirect is an interrogative with declarative struc- 
ture. 

The speaker apparently seeks confirmation of his state- 
ment rather than information. 

Rule for the Delivery of the Indirect. 

The Indirect Interrogative is delivered with the First Sweep to 
the emphatic word, and the Second Sweep to the end. When it 
consists of members, each member is delivered according to the rule 
just given. 

Examples. 



2. He did not deny his share in the unhappy transaction ? 

3. He went to Europe after you saw him on that occasion ? 

4. Give it here, my honest fellow. 
Q. You will take it ? 

A. To be sure I will. 

Q. And will smoke it ? 

A. That I will. 

Q. And will not think of giving me anything in return ? 

Exception. 

The last member of a series of Indirects may take the Perfect 
Fall. 

Example 4 above ought to be thus read, and also the 
following : — 



62 READING AND SPEAKING. 

Q. My dear, you have some pretty beads there ? 
A. Yes, papa. 

Q. And you seem to be vastly pleased with them ? 
A. Yes, papa. 

Not infrequently, particularly in oral discourse, the 
speaker asks and answers a series of questions. For 
example : — 

" What would content you ? Talent ? No. Enterprise ? No. 
Courage ? No. Virtue ? No. The man whom you would select 
should possess not one but all. 11 

These answers are so much a part of the questions that 
they seem to require the delivery of the interrogative in 
declarative form, — the Indirect. That is delivered with 
the two Sweeps. Here they are developed on one word, 
and become the Circumflex. The exception above says 
that the last of a series of Indirects may take the Perfect 
Fall. One of the exceptions to the rule for the delivery 
of the Definite says that the last of a series may take the 
Downward Slide. Read the sentence above in this way, 
with the Upward Slide on all of the Definites except the 
last, which takes the Downward Slide ; and with the Cir- 
cumflex on all the answers except the last, which takes the 
Perfect Fall. 

The effect is good. It can almost be formulated as a 
rule that, when the answers to such a series of questions 
are not obviously Declarative sentences only, they should 
be read as Indirect interrogatives. 

Examples. 

i. Oh, how hast thou with jealousy infected 

The sweetness of affiance ! Show men dutiful ? 

Why, so didst thou. Or seem they grave and learned? 

Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family ? 






SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 6$ 

Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious ? 

Why, so didst thou. 
2. Are you ignorant of many things ? The Gospel offers you in- 
struction. Have you deviated from the path of duty ? The Gospel 
offers you forgiveness. Do temptations surround you ? The Gospel 
offers you the aid of heaven. Are you exposed to misery ? It consoles 
you. Are you subject to death ? It offers you immortality. 

The Double Interrogative. 

The Double Interrogative consists of two alternative 
questions, united by the word " or." 

Rule for its Delivery. 

The Double Interrogative is delivered with the Upward Slide to 
the "or," and the Downward Slide from it. 

When each or either part has members, each member 
has its own Upward or Downward Slide, as the case 
may be, each Upward Slide rising higher than its pred- 
ecessor; each Downward Slide falling lower. 

Examples. 

i. Was it fancy, or was it fact ? 

2. Are the stars that gem the vault above us mere decorations of 
the night, or suns and centres of planetary systems ? 

3. Did those great Italian masters begin and proceed in their art 
without choice of method, and always draw with the same ease and 
freedom ; or did they observe some method, by beginning with sim- 
ple and elementary parts, — an eye, a nose, a finger, — which they 
drew with great pains and care ; often drawing the same thing, in 
order to draw it correctly ; and so proceeding with patience and 
industry, till, after considerable time they arrived at the masterly 
manner you speak of ? 

Notice that the definition of the Double Interrogative 
specified that the questions were alternative. When no 



64 READING AND SPEAKING. 

alternative thoughts are expressed, when the "or" is not 
disjunctive, the interrogative is not Double, and is deliv- 
ered according to the class to which it belongs. For exam- 
ple : " [When shall we be stronger ? ] Will it be next week 
or the next year? " This is plainly a Definite Interrogative ; 
just as the following is an Indefinite: — "Who would be so 
mean, or so base, or so lost to all the nobler instincts?" 

The Semi-Interrogative. 

The Semi-Interrogative is part Declarative and part Interrogative. 
The Declarative portion may, with the Interrogative, form a Close, 
Loose, or Compact sentence, and is delivered according to the rules 
governing the class to which it belongs. The Interrogative part 
may be Definite, Indefinite, Indirect, or Double, and is delivered 
according to the rule governing its class. 

Examples. 

i. {Close.) Some have sneeringly asked, Are Americans too poor 
to pay a few pounds on stamped paper ? 

2. {Loose.) In such a state, eloquence, it is obvious, would be most 
studied as the surest means of rising to influence and power v ; and 
what kind of eloquence? 

3. (Compact.) It is [indeed] easy for us to maintain her doctrine at 
this late day, when there is but one party on the subject, — an immense 
people' ; but what tribute shall we bestow, what sacred paean shall we 
raise over the tombs of those who dared, in the face of unrivaled power, 
and within reach of majesty, to blow the blast of freedom throughout a 
subject continent? 

Exception. 

Often when the Declarative part of the Semi-Interrogative fol- 
lows the Interrogative, it is delivered with the slide of the Inter- 
rogative, or has a like slide of its own. 

Examples. 

1. Did you see the procession? asked the little fellow eagerly. 

2. When are you going to pay me? he asked sternly. 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 65 

3. Do you think I fear you? he replied, looking him squarely in the 
face. 

4. Do you dread death in my company? he cried to the anxious 
sailors when the ice on the coast of Holland had almost crushed the 
boat that was bearing him to the shore. 

{See Remarks on the Effect of the Compellative in Delivery, 
page 68.) 

Sometimes sentences, apparently Interrogative or Semi- 
Interrogative, are not interrogative at all, except in form. 
Such is often the case when the speaker is speaking of 
questions, not asking them, nor saying that any one asked 
them. Such apparent Interrogatives should be read like 
Declaratives. 

Example. 

Shall the children of the men of Marathon become slaves of Philip ; 
shall the majesty of the Senate and people of Rome stoop to wear the 
chains forged by the military executors of the will of Julius Caesar ; 
shall the assembled representatives of France, just waking from her 
sleep of ages to claim the rights of man, disperse at the order of the 
king ; shall Ireland bound upward from her long prostration, and cast 
from her the last link of British chain, and shall she advance "from 
injuries to arms, from arms to liberty," from liberty to glory ; shall the 
Thirteen Colonies become and be free and independent States, and 
come, unabashed, unterrined, an equal, into the majestic assembly of 
the nations? — these are the thoughts with which all bosoms are dis- 
tended and oppressed. 

Exclamatory Sentences. 

Most Exclamatory sentences may be classified in some 
one of the foregoing divisions of sentences, and are gov- 
erned by the rules for the delivery of such sentences ; with 
this qualification : that from their very nature Exclamatory 
sentences are delivered with more stress, or power, or feel- 
ing, and therefore the inflections are accentuated. There 



66 READING AND SPEAKING. 

can be no rule for feeling ; the intelligence of the reader 
or speaker must determine that. 

There are, however, certain exclamations, usually called 
interjections, concerning whose delivery certain general 
suggestions may be made. They are Ah, Aha, Alas, Eh, 
Ha, Hah, 0, Oh. These interjections, when introducing 
Exclamatory sentences, often form a sort of Keynote to 
the sentence. Sometimes they are mere emissions of 
sound ; as "Ah, you ought to have seen him !" " O noble 
judge ! O excellent young man ! " " Oh, that the sal- 
vation of Israel were come out of Zion ! " 

When the Exclamatory sentence expresses contempt, 
irony, suspicion, and the like, the interjection often is 
emphasized, the Second Sweep descending sharply into 
the body of the sentence, to come up at the next em- 
phatic word. Thus : — 

1 . Aha ! you thought me blind, did you ? 

2. Ah! what, so rank? Ah, ha! there's mischief in the man. 

Usually these words are delivered with the Bend, par- 
ticularly when they are used independently, and express 
surprise, curiosity, triumph, and the like. 

They often take the Circumflex to express contempt, 
irony, suspicion. 

Examples. 

i . Eh ! are you sure of it ? 

2. Hah! have I caught thee at last ? 

3. Oh ! but he paused on the brink. 

4. Yea, they opened their mouths against me and said, " Aha! aha ! 
our eyes have seen it." 

5. Let them be desolate for a reward of their shame who say unto 
me, " Aha! aha!" 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. 6? 

Other exclamations as, Avaunt, Beware, Hail, Hold, Lo, 
Psha, and the like are usually delivered with Perfect Fall. 

The word "well" is often used as an exclamation, and 
as an expletive. Of course when used as an adverb, though 
standing alone, it is equivalent to a sentence and can be 
classified and delivered accordingly. 

When used as an exclamation it takes Partial or Perfect 
Fall. Thus: "He's dead, is he? Weir, weir ! " When 
used as expletive, to introduce a sentence, it takes the Bend. 
For example : "Well', honor is the subject of my story." 

I am well aware that these suggestions — they ought 
not to be called rules — regarding the delivery of inter- 
jections are very inadequate. Such words are delivered 
with so many varying shades of inflection to express their 
various shades of meaning that rules cannot help much. 
Here, as always, intelligence makes the rule. 

COMPELLATIVES. 

Compellatives are words used in direct address. 
They are delivered with the Bend. 

Examples. 

i. Gentlemen', I shall not speak long. 

2. I do not come here, fellow-citizens', to make an elaborate speech. 

3. I call the gentleman to order, Mr. Speaker'. 

4. Where are you going, my pretty maid? 

5. Where shall we draw the line, fellow-citizens? 

6. Shall we go to work or go a-fishing, George? 

Notice that the Compellative standing at the end of a 
sentence does not materially effect its delivery. In Ex- 
ample 3 there is the Fall at " order," in 4 and 5 the Down- 
ward Slide of the Indefinite, and then the Compellative 
with the Bend following. If the Compellative has any 



68 READING AND SPEAKING. 

effect in such sentences, it is to check somewhat the in- 
flection, with which, without the Compellative, the sentence 
would be delivered. 

I know of but one exception to this statement. When 
the Compellative is at the end of the Indefinite Interroga- 
tive portion of a Semi-Interrogative, and is followed by 
the declarative part, the Bend of the Compellative causes 
the declarative part to end with the Bend. Thus : — 

" ' Where are you going, my pretty maid ? ' he said, trying hard to 
speak in a very smooth tone'." 

(See Exception to Ride for the Delivery of Semi-Interrog- 
atives, page 65.) 

Exceptions. 

I. Compellatives in very emphatic Declarative sentences, or 
Indefinite Interrogatives, usually take the Downward Slide of such 
sentences. 

Examples. 

1. Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on! 

2. Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites ? 

3. What were your outrageous plans, ye traitors ? 

II. Short Compellatives, as, "sir," "gentlemen," and the like, 
at the beginning of formal speeches or letters, and at the end of 
Declarative sentences, are often delivered with Partial or Perfect 
Fall. 

This is merely conventional delivery and may wisely be 
departed from. 

III. Compellatives repeated that they may be heard, usually take 
the Fall. 

Thus : — 



"John', John\ come here." 

"Mr. Speaker', Mr. Speaker^ I desire to be heard." 






sentences and their delivery. 69 

The Circumstance. 

A Circumstance is a portion of a sentence necessary to the 
sense, but not to the grammatical construction. 

Compellatives may be classed as Circumstances. 



Rule for the Delivery of the Circumstance. 

The Circumstance (unless it is a Compellative) takes the delivery 
of the clause preceding it. When it stands at the beginning of a 
sentence it takes the Bend. 

Examples. 

1. Thus', the Puritan was made up of two different men. 

2. I have, with a good deal of attention, considered the subject. 

3. Hug not this delusion to your breast\ I pray you x . 

4. He has forfeited my esteem\ he said^. 



Exception. 

When the Circumstance expresses a thought in contrast with, 
or alternative to the clause preceding, it takes the Partial Fall. 

Examples. 

1. It is essential that one who speaks much', or who even speaks 
little^, should acquire command of himself. 

2. The man of affairs, as well as the student, should be interested 
in these things. 

This downward inflection at the pause of imperfect 
sense is due to the emphasis. 

{See Exception I, page 77.) 

When the Circumstance stands at the end of a sentence, 
it has little effect on the delivery of the words preceding 
it, except to make the inflections less pronounced ; chang- 
ing, of course, Perfect Fall to Partial. 



70 READING AND SPEAKING. 

The Parenthesis. 

The Parenthesis differs from the Circumstance in this : 
it is necessary neither to the sense nor to the construction 
of the sentence in which it stands. It is delivered accord- 
ing to the rule governing the Circumstance. 

Both Circumstance and Parenthesis should be delivered 
in a Key different from that of the main body of the sen- 
tence. Usually this should be a lower Key. For ex- 
ample : — 

Key. — And he then', put on his hat. 

with great care and deliberation', 
Key. — Are you still, ... in bad health ? 

(I fear you are,) 

Sometimes the best effect can be produced by reading 
the Circumstance or the Parenthesis in a higher key and 
lighter tone than the rest of the sentence. 

Mixed Sentences. 

Of course it very often happens that a sentence is made 
up of parts of two or more sentences of the same class or 
of different classes. You should not attempt to separate 
the parts of such a Mixed sentence ; but should read each 
part according to the rules governing the class to which it 
belongs. 

One example will be sufficient ; and the following, from 
the well-known speech of Daniel Webster, is a fine example. 
The words in italics indicate the character of the clause 
following them. 

{First part of a Single Compact} When my eyes shall be turned to 
behold for the last time the sun in the heaven' {Double Compact with 
first and third parts. First part has three members, e?iding at " Union" 
"belligerent" and "blood." Third part, beginning at "let," has three 
members, — ending at " advanced" " lustre" and " obsaired" — and 



SENTENCES AND THEIR DELIVERY. J I 

the beginning of a fourth member), may I not see him shining on the 
broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union' ; on states 
dissevered, discordant, belligerent' ; on a land rent with civil feuds, 
or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood' ; let their last feeble and 
lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, 
now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high ad- 
vanced v ; its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre v ; not 
a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured^ ; bearing for 
its motto' (The beginning of another Double Compact, of two parts, — 
first and third. First part has two ?ne7nbers, ending at " worth " and 
1 ' afterwards ") no such miserable interrogatory as ' ' What is all this 
worth' ? " nor those other words of delusion and folly, " Liberty first 
and Union afterwards' " ; but everywhere, spread all over in characters 
of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea 
and over the land and in every wind under the whole heavens, that 
other sentiment \ dear to every true American heart \ — Liberty and 
Union ; now and forever ; one and inseparable. 

Notice that the words "What is all this worth/' are 
read with the Bend, and not with the Falling Slide of the 
Indefinite Interrogative. There is no question asked. The 
words are only a phrase describing what might be on the 
banner ; and are read exactly as though you said, " No 
such miserable motto as 'Nullification.' " 

(See Remarks under Semi-Interrogatives, page 65.) 



J2 READING AND SPEAKING. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

RHETORICAL PAUSES. THE VOCAL EFFECT OF EMPHASIS. 

Take time to pause. Midsu?nmer-Nigh?s Dream. 

But yet I'll make a pause. King Henry VI. 

In the rules relating to Emphasis which follow, reference 
is made to "pauses that take the Bend." When these 
pauses are suggested by punctuation marks, they are 
usually commas. But pauses constantly occur between 
words not separated by punctuation marks. The following 
rules will help you to decide when such rhetorical pauses 
should be made : — 

Rule I. 

When the subject of a proposition is a single word, is imme- 
diately followed by the verb, and is emphasized, there should be 
a pause before the verb. 

In the following examples the rhetorical pause is indi- 
cated by a dash. 

Examples. 

i . Honesty — is the best policy. 

2. Necessity — knows no rules. 

3. Ediccation — is worth working for. 

This pause is largely, if not entirely, due to emphasis. 
Place the emphasis on any other word in the sentence and 
the pause disappears. 

Rule II. 

When the subject consists of several words immediately followed 
by the verb, there is a pause before the verb. 



rhetorical pauses. 73 

Examples. 

i. To speak distinctly — is to speak well. 

2. The days of pompous eloquence — are gone by. 

3. How to reach that easy tone — is the serious question. 

Rule III. 

When a Circumstance or a clause comes between the subject 
and the verb, it should have a pause before and after it. 

Examples. 

1. The court-room — during these two or three minutes — presented 
an extraordinary spectacle. 

2. Industry — say what you will — pays. 

3. Honesty — you say — is the best policy. 

Usually in such sentences the pauses are suggested 
by the punctuation ; but, whether suggested or not, they 
should be made. 

Rule IV. 

When a Circumstance, or clause, comes between the verb and the 
object, it may have a pause before and after it. There will almost 
always be a pause after it. 

Examples. 

1. His speaking produced — on this account — instant effect. 

2. He made — with apparent ease — a great impression. 

3. In this way he distinguished — blind as he was — most of the 
colors. 

Rule V. 

When the natural order of words or clauses is changed, there should 
be a pause between the parts thus transposed. 

Examples. 

1. In the morning — it flourisheth : in the evening — it is cut 
down. 



74 READING AND SPEAKING. 

2. Without break or hesitation — he spoke for an hour. 

3. To accomplish this — he had devoted all his time. 

Rule VI. 

Relative, participial, prepositional, adverbial, and infinitive clauses 
or phrases are often preceded and followed by pauses. When such 
subordinate clauses or phrases qualify what precedes, the pause is 
longer than when they specify. In the latter case there is little 
if any pause. 

Examples. 

1. There was not one in the assembly — who could think it unmanly 
to weep. 

2. He stood — bending forward — with eager eyes. ■ 

3. He longed to run — with eager feet — at her bidding. 

4. Shall they be allowed — to do as they please ? 

5. It is a great advance — when a man's heart and brain reach out 
beyond his personal interests. 

6. Shall he use it — as he sees fit? 

7. He looked forward to the time — when he should be free. 

8. He longed for the spot — where he had been happy. 

9. He would endure all — so that he might succeed. 

10. A good voice has a charm in speech — as in song. 

1 1 . When the thing — which a man does — is so completely mastered 
— as that there is an absence of volition — he does it easily. 

Rule VII. 

In an elliptical sentence there should always be a pause where 
the ellipsis occurs. 

Usually the comma suggests the pause. 

Example. 

1. A wise man seeks to shine in himself; a fool — in others. 

2. To learning he added wisdom ; to wisdom — piety. 

3. Add to your faith virtue ; to virtue — knowledge. 

In many of the foregoing examples there are rhetorical 
pauses which I have not indicated. I have indicated only 



THE VOCAL EFFECT OF EMPHASIS. 75 

those that illustrate the rules of which they are given 
as examples. 

The Vocal Effect of Emphasis. 

Every teacher of reading or speaking has often noticed 
that his pupils have more or less difficulty in emphasizing 
the words they wish to emphasize. In conversation they 
have no such difficulty ; but it is quite another thing in 
reading, or in speaking something that has been committed 
to memory. Misplaced emphasis is one of the most fruit- 
ful sources of the sing-song tone, which often comes from 
the stress being applied at regular intervals, not on the 
really emphatic words ; indeed, not on the words which the 
reader thinks that he emphasizes. 

One of the most valuable chapters in Mandeville's " Ele- 
ments of Reading and Oratory " is that in which the 
author endeavors to analyze the movements of the voice 
in emphasis, and to give rules to aid in emphasizing. He 
tries to show, not what words should be emphasized, but 
what the voice does when emphasis is applied. He defines 
emphasis as — 

" a significant stress laid upon a word to mark the exclusion of its 
relative ideas, expressed or understood." 

Emphasis is not force ; it is not percussion ; it is not 
noise. It is, as Mandeville says, "stress"; and the course 
which the voice takes, to prepare for the application of the 
stress, and as a result of that application, is as much a 
part of emphasis as the stress itself. The emphatic 
Sweeps have already been defined on page 37, and the 
course of the voice roughly indicated. The following 
rules are based on Mandeville's theory, considerably modi- 
fied:— 



76 READING AND SPEAKING. 

Rule I. 
To prepare for the application of the stress, the voice is carried, 
by the First Sweep, above the key, to the emphatic word, or to the 
accented syllable of that word; and as a result of this application 
the voice is carried, by the Second Sweep, below the key and back 
to it or above it. 

Examples. 
Key. — Americans fft a y ty e (A\sh» but subjects, never. 

In this example, only the effect of emphasizing "friends " 
is considered. 

Rule II. 

The First Sweep is developed from the first pause preceding the 
emphatic word to that word, or its accented syllable. The Second 
Sweep, from that word or syllable to the next pause which, accord- 
ing to the preceding rules, takes the Bend. 

By "pause" is meant not only those suggested by punct- 
uation marks, but also the rhetorical pauses which we 
have considered. 

Examples. 

" These shall resist the empire of decay, 
When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away ; 
Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie ; 
But that which warmed it once can never die." 

In the first line the First Sweep begins at the first word 
and carries the voice to the accented syllable of " resist " ; 
then the Second Sweep carries it below the Key, and back 
to it, and a little above it at " decay," because there is the 
first pause that takes the Bend. It takes the Bend because 
it is the end of the first part of a Single Compact. In the 
second line the First Sweep begins with "when," and the 



THE VOCAL EFFECT OF EMPHASIS. *]7 

Second Sweep is developed to the end of "o'er." In 
the third line the First Sweep begins at the rhetorical 
pause following " dust," and carries the voice upward pre- 
paratory to the stress on " may " ; then the Second Sweep 
carries the voice down and up to the end of "lie," because 
that is the end of the first part of a Single Compact, and 
of course takes the Bend. In the fourth line the First 
Sweep begins at "but" and goes to "warmed," the Second 
Sweep being developed from "warm" to the rhetorical 
pause after "once." 

I do not mean to say that those are the only words to 
be emphasized in these lines. I choose them only to 
illustrate the rule. 

Exception I. 

The effect of unusually strong emphasis is often to carry the 
voice downward, in the Slide, to the end of the sentence or member, 
in spite of pauses which ordinarily would take the Bend. 

Examples. 

i. It is not true that he played the traitor in the hour of his country's 
trial. 

2. Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means 
which a God of nature hath placed in our power. 

Exception II. 

Often when emphasis falls on a word in the first part, or mem- 
ber of the first part, of a Compact, the Sweeps are developed over 
the whole of that part or member, notwithstanding intermediate 
pauses. 

Examples. 

i. No effeminate nobility^ crowded into the dark and austere ranks 
of the Pilgrims' ; [on the contrary, etc.] 

2. We do not understand the common phrase, " A good man, but 
a bad king " ; [we can as easily, etc.] 



78 READING AND SPEAKING. 

This development of the Second Sweep over all that 
follows the emphatic word — the voice going below the 
Key and rising only at the end of the part — gives a most 
excellent effect in the delivery of first parts of Compacts. 

Rule III. 

When the first word of a sentence is emphasized, the First Sweep 
is developed on that word if there is room. If not, the stress is 
immediately applied to that word, the voice starting at once above 
the key. 

For example, "Equinoctial storms occur in the spring 
and in the fall." Here there is room to sweep upward to 
the accented syllable of the emphatic word. In the sen- 
tence, " Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects 
overcome," the stress is directly applied to the first syllable 
of "other." 

Rule IV. 

When the emphatic word would, according to rule, take the 
Bend, the Second Sweep is developed on that word. 

Emphasize Bend in the sentence above, and you have a 
good illustration of the rule. 

Examples. 

i. It is essential that he who would speak well, must acquire com- 
mand of himself. 

2. The fact may be from your own experience, or from a book, but it 
must be brief, clear, telling. 

... Exception. . . 

When the emphatic word is closely followed by a short Cir- 
cumstance, the Second Sweep is developed on the Circumstance, 
notwithstanding the pause between it and the emphatic word. 



the vocal effect of emphasis. 79 

Examples. 

1. But youth, sir', is not my only crime. 

2. Real eloquence, young men, comes from the man. 

3. Honest endeavor, we may believe, does not go unrewarded. 

This is really no exception to the rule ; for words closely 
followed by short Circumstances do not naturally take the 
Bend. Indeed, this exception and Rules III. and IV. are 
but special directions for the application of Rule II. 

Rule V. 

Often when the emphatic word is immediately preceded by a 
pause, the emphasis itself makes a pause immediately after it 
necessary. In that case the Sweeps are developed on that word, how- 
ever short. Thus in a word of one syllable we get the Circumflex. 

Examples. 

1. Necessity is the mother of invention. 

2. War is the law of violence ; peace the law of love. 

Notice that if " necessity," or "war," or "peace" are 
not emphasized, there is no pause after them. 

Rule VI. 

When the emphatic word would, according to rule, take the 
Fall (Partial or Perfect), the Second Sweep is changed into the 
Fall. The emphasis causes the Fall to start from a higher key, 
and descend lower than otherwise. 

Examples. 

1 . The vocal organs can be developed. 

2. Persistent practice will do wonders. 

3. Vocal compass can be enlarged; variety of tone can be culti- 
vated ; distinct articulation can be acquired. 



SO READING AND SPEAKING. 

Rule VII. 

When the emphatic word is followed, without intermediate pause, 
by a word or phrase ending with a Fall, the Second Sweep is changed 
to the Downward Slide, unless another emphatic word intervene. 

Note. — When one emphatic word is followed, without intermediate pause, by 
another emphatic word, the Second Sweep of the first word is developed until it 
coincides with the First Sweep of the second word. 

Examples. 

i. The orator must command all his powers and faculties. 

2. It is not the public speaking that wears upon a man; it is the 
waiting for it. 

3. The best things in any speech are almost always the sudden 
flashes ; the thoughts not dreamed of before,. 

Rule VIII, 

Emphasis placed on a word in a sentence delivered with the 
Upward Slide, causes a slight dip in the Slide. 

Examples. 

1. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? 

2. Shall we try argument? 

3. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble stcftplication t 

We have learned that the delivery of an Indefinite Inter- 
rogative is with the First Sweep to the emphatic word, and 
the Downward Slide from it. 

In the second part of a Double Interrogative the First 
Sweep is rarely developed. The tendency to slide down 
from the "or" prevents anything more than a slight rise 
of the voice at the emphatic word, followed by increased 
force in the Downward Slide. 

Examples. 

1. Must we use force, or can we use argument? 
2.. Will you live all slaves, or die all freemen ? 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 8 1 



CHAPTER IX. 
THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 

Now I speak to some purpose. As You Like It. 

A speech of some dozen or sixteen lines. Hamlet. 

Before reading the following examples of sentences in 
class, you should study them carefully. First decide what 
kind of a sentence each is, and of course that will decide 
you as to the proper termination of each clause, or mem- 
ber, or sentence. Then decide which words ought to be 
emphasized, and apply the rules for emphasis. Then 
try to heed the suggestions given as to breathing, voice, 
naturalness, distinctness in articulation. Study each par- 
agraph as a whole, and endeavor to give each part its 
just value. 

When you read, stand erect, hold the book well up, that 
you may not have to bend the neck and thus interfere 
with the proper position of the vocal organs. 

Suppose that you are to read this sentence, from Daniel 
Webster's famous Dartmouth College argument: — 

i. This, sir, is my case. 2. It is the case, not merely of that 
humble institution; it is the case of every college in our land. 3. It 
is more: it is the case of every Eleemosynary Institution throughout 
our country ; of all those great charities founded by the piety of our 
ancestors to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the 
pathway of life. 4. It is more: it is, in some sense, the case of every 
man among us who has property of which he may be stripped ; for the 
case is simply this : Shall our State Legislatures be allowed to take that 
which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to 
such ends or purposes as they, in their discretion, may szzfit? 



82 READING AND SPEAKING. 

Below is an analysis of the sentence : a general model 
for you to follow. I have indicated the words that may be 
emphasized. I do not mean that they are the only words, 
or just the words, to emphasize. I give the analysis, sen- 
tence by sentence. 

I. Close Declarative, delivered with Bend at intermediate pauses, 
and Perfect Fall. Emphasizing this, the voice starts above the key : 
Second Sweep developed on the Circumstance, sir. First Sweep of 
case starts at preceding pause ; Second Sweep changed to Perfect Fall. 
.2. Negative Compact with first and third parts. First part ter- 
minates with Bend; third part with Perfect Fall. First Sweep of 
humble developed from preceding pause ; Second Sweep to the end of 
first part, at institution. First Sweep of every starts at the rhetorical 
pause before prepositional clause of every, etc. ; Second Sweep developed 
to the rhetorical pause before the prepositional clause, in our land; or 
if the emphasis is strong, the Sweep is changed to Downward Slide to 
the end of the sentence. 

3. Loose sentence with three members. Partial Fall at more and 
country, and Perfect Fall at life. Bend at intermediate pauses. Second 
Sweep of more changed to Partial Fall ; First Sweep of Eleemosynary 
begins at preceding rhetorical pause before the prepositional clause, of 
every, etc., and goes to accented syllable mos ; Second Sweep developed 
to the rhetorical pause before throughout, unless the emphasis is strong 
enough to change it to the Downward Slide to the end of the member. 
First Sweep of charities begins at preceding pause; Second Sweep 
developed on the word, because of the rhetorical pause before the 
participial clause, founded, etc. ; or, if emphasis is strong, developed to 
the pause before the infinitive clause, to alleviate, etc. Sweeps of alle- 
viate developed according to general rules, as is the First Sweep of 
blessings ; Second Sweep developed on the word, because of the rhetor- 
ical pause before the prepositional clause, along the, etc. 

4. Loose sentence with four members. Delivered with Partial Fall 
at more, stripped, and this ; Perfect Fall atyf/. Effects of emphasis of 
more as in third sentence. In some sense is a Circumstance, and 
should be read in a lower key ; Sweeps of some developed between the 
pauses. First Sweep of man begins at the slight rhetorical pause after 
case ; Second Sweep developed to the pause before the relative clause, 
who has, etc. First Sweep of stripped begins after pause preceding 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 83 

prepositional clause, of which he, etc. ; Second Sweep changed to 
Partial Fall. The rhetorical pause following the Circumstance simply, 
prevents a development of the First Sweep of this, the voice starting 
above the key; the Second Sweep is changed to Partial Fall. First 
Sweep of allowed begins at the rhetorical pause after our State Legisla- 
tures (see Rule II., Rhetorical Pauses) ; Second Sweep goes to the 
pause preceding the relative which. First Sweep of not begins at the 
preceding pause, and Second Sweep goes to the following pause. 
Second Sweep of turn is developed until it becomes, or coincides with, 
the First Sweep of original. First sweep of they begins after rhetorical 
sweep before as ; Second Sweep developed on the word. Second 
Sweep oifit -changed to Perfect Fall. (See Remarks under Semi-Inter- 
rogative, p. 65.) 

Having decided just how a paragraph should be read, 
then strive to give to each clause its proper force, its proper 
key. All emphatic words are not equally emphatic. All 
pauses are not equal. All Second Sweeps do not rise to 
the same height. I do not believe that these variations 
of voice, emphasis, inflection, can be successfully taught in 
a book. Use your brains ; use your ears. It means study. 
Yes, and it is worth study. One thing is certain : if you 
read according to the rules which you have learned in this 
book, you cannot read in a monotone. 

To the following selections for practice in the applica- 
tion of the rules, I have in some instances added the name 
of the author. Those with the name of Beecher added are 
from Henry Ward Beecher's oration on " Oratory." 

1. The best hope that any orator can have is to rise at favored 
moments to some height of enthusiasm that shall make all his previous 
structure of preparation superfluous ; as the ship in launching glides 
from the ways, and scatters cradle-timbers and wedges upon the 
waters that are henceforth to be her home. — T. W. Higginson. 

2. A man who is to be an orator must have something to say ; he 
must have something that in his very soul he feels to be worth saying ; 
he must have in his nature that kindly sympathy which connects him 



84 READING AND SPEAKING. 

with his fellow-men, and which so makes him a part of the audience 
which he moves as that his smile is their smile, that his tear is their 
tear, and that the throb of his heart becomes the throb of the hearts of 
the whole assembly. — Beecher. 

3. So long as men touch the ground, and feel their own weight, so 
long they need the aptitudes and the instrumentalities of the human 
body ; and one of the very first steps in oratory is that which trains the 
body to be the welcome and glad servant of the soul ; for many and 
many a one, who has acres of thought, has little bodily culture, and as 
little grace of manners ; and many and many a one who has sweetening 
inside has cacophony when he speaks. — Beecher. 

4. A good voice has a charm in speech as in song ; sometimes of 
itself enchains attention, and indicates a rare sensibility ; especially 
when trained to wield its powers. — Emerson. 

5. In moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy, the voice will 
attain a music and penetration which surprises the speaker as much as 
the auditor ; he also is a sharer in the higher wind that blows over his 
strings. — Emerson. 

6. If I should make the shortest list of the qualifications of the 
orator, I should begin with manliness ; and perhaps it means here, 
presence of mind. — Emerson. 

7. These are ascending stairs — a good voice, winning manners, 
plain speech, chastened, however, by the schools into correctness ; but 
we must come to the main matter, of power of statement — know your 
fact ; hug your fact. — Emerson. 

8. John Adams's eloquence alone seemed to have met every demand 
of the time ; as a question of right, as a question of prudence, as a 
question of immediate opportunity, as a question of feeling, as a ques- 
tion of conscience, as a question of historical and durable and innocent 
glory, he knew it all, through and through ; and in that mighty debate, 
which, beginning in Congress as far back as March or February, 1776, 
had its close on the second and on the fourth of July, he presented it 
in all its aspects, to every passion and affection ; to the burning sense 
of wrong, exasperated at length beyond control by the shedding of 
blood ; to grief, anger, self-respect ; to the desire of happiness and of 
safety ; to the sense of moral obligation, commanding that the duties 
of life are more than life ; to the courage which fears God, and knows 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 85 

no other fear ; to the craving of the colonial heart, of all hearts, for 
the reality and the ideal of country, and which cannot be filled unless 
the dear native land comes to be breathed on by the grace, clad in the 
robes, armed with the thunders, admitted as an equal to the assembly, 
of the nations ; to that large and heroical ambition which would build 
states ; that imperial philanthropy which would open to liberty an 
asylum here, and give to the sick heart, hard fare, fettered conscience 
of the children of the Old World, healing, plenty, and freedom to 
worship God. — Rufus Choate. 

9. To him who in the love of Nature holds 

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty ; and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And gentle sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware. — Bryant. 

10. A living force that brings to itself all the resources of imagina- 
tion, all the inspiration of feeling, all that is influential in body, in voice, 
in eye, in gesture, in posture, in the whole animated man, is in strict 
analogy with the divine thought and the divine arrangement ; and there 
is no misconstruction more utterly untrue and fatal than that oratory 
is an artificial thing, which deals with baubles and trifles, for the sake 
of making bubbles of pleasure for transient effect on mercurial audi- 
ences. — Beecher. 

11. I advocate, in its full extent, and for every reason of humanity, 
of patriotism, and of religion, a more thorough culture of oratory ; and 
I define oratory to be the art of influencing conduct with the truth 
set home by all the resources of the living man. — Beecher. 

12. At midnight, in his guarded tent, 

The Turk was dreaming of the hour 
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, 

Should tremble at his power ; 
In dreams, through court and camp, he bore 
The trophies of a conqueror ; 

In dreams his song of triumph heard ; 
Then wore his monarch's signet ring ; 
Then pressed that monarch's throne, — a king ; 



86 READING AND SPEAKING. 

As wild his thoughts, as gay of wing, 

As Eden's garden bird. — Fitz-Gr'eene Halleck. 

13. Then with eyes to the front all, 
And with guns horizontal, 

Stood our sires ; 
And the balls whistled deadly, 
And in streams flashing redly 
Blazed the fires ; 
As the roar 
On the shore 
Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green-sodden acres 

Of the plain ; 
And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black gunpowder, 
Cracking amain ! 

— Guy Humphrey McMaster. 

14. If you consider deliberative eloquence, in its highest forms and 
noblest exertion, to be the utterances of men of genius, practised, 
earnest, and sincere, according to a rule of art, in presence of large 
assemblies, in great conjunctures of public affairs, to persuade a 
People ; it is quite plain that those largest of all conjunctures, which 
you properly call times of revolution, must demand and supply a delib- 
erative eloquence all their own. — Ruftis Choate. 

15. If you can electrify an audience by the power of a living man on 
dead things, how much more should that audience be electrified when 
the chords are living, and the man is alive, and he knows how to touch 
them with divine inspiration. — Beecher. 

16. When the thing which a man does is so completely mastered as 
that there is an absence of volition, and he does it without knowing it, 
he does it easily. When the volition is not subdued, and when, there- 
fore, he does not act spontaneously, he is conscious of what he does ; 
and the consciousness prevents his doing it easily. — Beecher. 

17. As in morals, whenever a man thinks himself humble, then is 
the moment of his most insidious pride ; so in eloquence, whenever a 
speaker becomes conscious in any measure of himself, and is led to 
think of how he is doing that which he is speaking, or how he is to do 
that which is still before him, he loses that which, most of all, the 
true orator desires to attain. — W. M. Taylor. 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 87 

18. When one has so completely mastered the principles of logic, 
rhetoric, and elocution, that he acts upon them without thinking either 
of them or of himself, then the manner is to the matter as the powder 
is to the ball, and the spirit is to the spark, by which the might that 
was in the powder is exploded for the propulsion of the ball, and sends 
it with tremendous impact against the wall of the fortress which he is 
seeking to bombard. — W. M. Taylor. 

19. Are we to go on still cudgelling, and cudgelling, and cudgelling 
men's ears with coarse processes? Are we to consider it a special 
providence when any good comes from our preaching or our teaching? 
Are we never to study how skilfully to pick the lock of curiosity ; to 
unfasten the door of fancy ; to throw wide open the halls of emotion, 
and to kindle the light of inspiration in the souls of men ? Is there 
any reality in oratory? It is all real. — Beecher. 

20. Taking, now, another step forward, and presuming that one has 
this special gift, what more is required for the highest eloquence? 
I answer, in the first place, a good character. — W. M. Taylor. 

21. As each young tree may be pruned and trained and developed 
acording to the laws of its own nature, and so be made of its kind a 
more perfect tree, so almost every preacher, early in his life, may be 
corrected and trained and developed according to the laws of his own 
nature, and so be made of his kind a more perfect preacher. — A. J. 
Up son. 

22. Who does not know how clear the mind is when we wake in 
the morning; how we solve problems, and think out perplexing ques- 
tions while bathing and dressing, although the previous night the mind 
was inert and dead? That is what is meant by mental freshness ; an * 
what we need is to bring this precise quality, this oxygen of the mind, 
into our speeches. — T. IV. Htgginson. 

23. His [Whitefield's] biographer has asked the question, " Why 
did he produce such an effect on different minds, so different in original 
endowment and in cultivation? " And his biographer answers his own 
question by saying : " Because, among other reasons, he gave attention 
— laborious, careful, unwearied attention — to both the composition 
and the delivery of his discourses. He left nothing to accident that he 
could regulate by care. Benjamin Franklin has confirmed the observa- 
tion of Foote and Garrick, that Whitefield's oratory was not perfected 
until he had delivered a sermon for the fortieth time." 



88 READING AND SPEAKING. 

24. Why should you keep your head over your shoulder ? Why 
drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, lest you contradict 
somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose 
you do contradict yourself; what then? Out upon your guarded lips! 
Sew them up with packthread ; do. Else, if you would be a man, speak 
what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls ; and to-morrow 
speak what to-morrow thinks, in hard words again, though it contradict 
everything you said to-day. "Ah, then," exclaim the aged ladies, 
" you shall be sure to be misunderstood." Misunderstood ! It is a 
right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood ? Pythagoras 
was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Luther, and Copernicus, and 
Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took 
flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. — Emerson. 

25. We reckon the bar, the Senate, journalism, and the pulpit, 
peaceful professions ; but you cannot escape the demand for courage in 
these ; and certainly there is no true orator who is not a hero. — Beecher. 

26. In your struggles with the world, should a crisis ever occur 
when even friendship may deem it prudent to desert you ; when even 
your country may seem ready to abandon herself and you ; when priest 
and Levite shall come and look on you, and pass by on the other side ; 
seek refuge, my friends, and be assured you shall find it, in the friend- 
ship of Laelius and Scipio ; in the patriotism of Cicero, Demosthenes, 
and Burke ; as well as in the precepts and example of Him whose law 
is love, and who taught us to remember injuries only to forgive them. 
— John Quincy Adams. 

27. You may have the matter clearly arranged and cogently ex- 
pressed; and you may have the manner possessed of the negative 
quality of faultlessness ; yet there may be no eloquence. 

28. No monarchical throne presses these States together; no iron 
chain of military power encircles them ; they live and stand under a 
Government, popular in' its form, representative in its character, founded 
upon principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last for- 
ever. , 

29. No matter who was the sufferer, or what the form of the in- 
justice, — starving Yorkshire peasant, imprisoned Chartist, persecuted 
Protestant, or negro slave ; no matter of what right, personal or 
civil, the victim had been robbed ; no matter what religious pretext or 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 89 

political juggle alleged "necessity" as an excuse for his oppression; 
no matter with what solemnities he had been devoted on the altar of 
slavery ; the moment O'Connell saw him, the altar and the God sank 
together in the dust ; the victim was acknowledged a man and a brother, 
equal in all rights, and entitled to all the aid the great Irishman could 
give him. — Wendell Phillips. 

30. As goods when lost we know are seldom found ; 
As fading gloss no rubbing can excite ; 

As flowers when dead are trampled on the ground ; 

As broken glass no cement can unite ; 

So beauty blemished once is ever lost, 

In spite of physic, painting, pains, and cost. 

31. Did sweeter sounds adorn my flowing tongue, 
Than ever man pronounced, or angel sung ; 
Had I all knowledge, human and divine, 
That thought can reach, or science can define ; 
And had I power to give that knowledge birth, 
In all the speeches of the babbling earth ; 
Did Shadrach's zeal my glowing breast inspire 
To weary tortures, and rejoice in fire ; 

Or had I faith like that which Israel saw, 
When Moses gave them miracles and law ; 
Yet gracious Charity, indulgent guest, 
Were not thy power exerted in my breast, 
That scorn of life would be but wild despair ; 
A cymbal's sound were better than my voice ; 
My faith were form : my eloquence were noise. 

32. I have a part to act, not for my own security or safety, for I am 
looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, 
if wreck there must be ; but for the good of the whole and the preserva- 
tion of all ; and there is that which will keep me to my duty during 
this struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear for many 
days. — Webster. 

33. He would keep the Union according to the Constitution, not as 
a relic, a memorial, a tradition; not for what it has done, though that 
kindled his gratitude and excited his admiration ; but for what it is 
now and hereafter to do, when adapted by a wise, practical philosophy 



90 READING AND SPEAKING. 

to a wider and higher area, to larger numbers, to severer and more 
glorious probation. — Choate. 

34. They had not found in his [Webster's] speeches so much 
adulation of the people ; so much of the music which robs the public 
reason of itself; so many phrases of humanity and philanthropy; but 
every year they came nearer and nearer to him ; and as they came 
nearer they loved him better; they heard how tender the son had 
been ; the husband, the brother, the father, the friend, and the neigh- 
bor ; that he was plain, simple, natural, generous, hospitable ; that 
he loved little children, and reverenced God, the Scriptures, the 
Sabbath day, the Constitution, and the Law; and their hearts clave 
unto him. — Choate. 

35. When round the lonely cottage 

Roars loud the tempest's din ; 
And the good logs of Algidus 

Roar louder yet within ; 
When the oldest cask is opened, 

And the largest lamp is lit ; 
When the chestnuts glow in the embers, 

And the kid turns on the spit ; 
When young and old in circle 

Around the firebrands close ; 
When the girls are weaving baskets, 

And the boys are shaping bows ; 
When the goodman mends his armor, 

And trims his helmet's plume ; 
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily 

Goes flashing through the room ; 
With weeping and with laughter, 

Still is the story told, 
How well Horatius kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. — Macaulay. 

36. If there be any reasonable ground for believing that the speaker 
is insincere or immoral, then his oration has no more influence upon 
the hearers than the representation of an actor on the stage has on 
the spectators ; or rather, it has just the same kind of influence ; for 
they admire it as a performance, and nothing more. — W. M. Taylor. 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 91 

37. When the speaker is one whose life for years has been known 
and read of all men, and who has proved himself to be a pure, dis- 
interested, and consistent man, then the weight of all that gives 
momentum to his words ; they have in them what the Abbe Mullois 
has so felicitously called " the accent of conviction " ; and they tell with 
power upon his audience. — W. M. Taylor. 

38. Give us a man with the stirrings of oratorical genius in his soul ; 
let him be early and thoroughly trained in the mastery of elocution 
and the management of action ; make him familiar with the setting 
forth of an argument after a logical fashion, and in such style as 
rhetoric shall approve ; let him be known for high-toned principle, 
and genuine moral excellence ; give him such practice in public speak- 
ing as may be gained through taking interest in the affairs of his church, 
his city, or his state ; let him be placed in the thick of some tremendous 
conflict for truth, or law, or liberty, or religion ; let him be brought out 
by some such occasion as Webster had in his reply to Hayne, or Lin- 
coln had in his conflict with Douglas, or Gladstone had in his opposi- 
tion to Beaconsfield in his famous Mid-Lothian Campaign ; and he 
will speak in language which will echo round the world and reverberate 
through all coming ages. — W. M. Taylor. 



92 READING AND SPEAKING. 



CHAPTER X. 
SOME GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. 

We are to speak in public. Winter's Tale. 

I wish to make some general suggestions concerning 
methods and habits in reading and speaking. First, I 
should like to impress strongly upon you the importance 
of at once deciding that you will never read anything in 
public — no matter how small and informal the audience 
— without first having studied it carefully. By this I do 
not mean merely running over the selection, applying the 
rules which you have learned here, and deciding what words 
are to be emphasized. I mean that in addition to all this, 
which is very important, you should read the "piece " 
aloud, again and again. You cannot know what you are 
doing without reading aloud. You must hear your voice, 
with its many inflections, if you would decide wisely as to 
the best methods of reading. 

Of course there may be occasions when you will be 
obliged to read without preparation ; but avoid them 
always. I often wonder whether there are many clergy- 
men who, before going into the pulpit, carefully rehearse 
the hymns and the Scripture lessons, and the other parts 
of the church service which they are to read. They se- 
lect the hymns and run them over, to see which verses 
shall be omitted; they select the chapters from the 
Bible and meditate upon them ; but I very much fear 
that there is little study with the aim to make those 
hymns and passages of Scripture helpful, and inspiring, 



SOME GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. 93 

and uplifting to the congregation. But isn't it worth 
while ? 

It is said that Charlotte Cushman never, in her pub- 
lic readings, "read the pettiest anecdote, or even a few 
verses, without the most careful and laborious prepa- 
ration. On one occasion, in Chicago, she prepared her- 
self for an encore by selecting a negro anecdote which 
met her eye, and which filled about twenty lines in a 
newspaper. For three or four days she read and re- 
read this story, in her private room, trying the effects of 
different styles of recitation, now emphasizing this word, 
now that, now pitching her voice to one key, and* now 
to another, until she had discovered what seemed to be 
the best way to bring out its ludicrous features into the 
boldest relief." 

No one expects the clergyman to imitate the actress 
in this laborious study, but if every young man who 
expects to enter the ministry would lay down for him- 
self the rule I suggested in the first paragraph of this 
chapter, there would be better reading in the pulpit .and 
more devotion in the pews. But do you, I beg of you, 
use something of Charlotte Cushman's care in prepar- 
ing whatever you are to read before any audience. 
Are you to read a set of resolutions at a meeting of 
your class ? Study them. Are you to conduct a Young 
Men's Christian Association meeting ? Study your se- 
lections for reading. Are you to read a paper before 
your Literary Society, or in a University Seminary, or 
before a Social Science Club ? Study your paper. You 
will very likely thus get the reputation of being a good 
reader, for of course you will never read in public to 
amuse or entertain the audience without much study of 
your selections. It is only when we are to read some- 



94 READING AND SPEAKING. 

thing of real importance that we think preparation unnec- 
essary. 

The question is often asked, " Should one look away 
from the text when reading ? " That is, should one 
try and make the reading more effective by earnest and 
emphatic glances at his hearers. Of course this is a 
matter of individual taste. Most of us like to have the 
lecturer and the clergyman as little confined to his man- 
uscript as possible. If you are reading from your own 
writing, or from any other which you think will be im- 
proved by your impressing something of your own per- 
sonality on the hearers, then the eyes may emphasize 
what the lips pronounce. If you are so familiar with 
the text that you can repeat whole sentences without 
glancing at the page, so much the better. You ought 
at least to be able to speak the concluding words of 
sentences without the aid of the text. There are read- 
ers, lecturers usually, who read the latter part of each 
sentence, running the eyes forward at the same time, 
so that they may begin the new sentence with eyes 
on the audience. This seems to me a bad habit. The 
first words of a sentence are not usually the most im- 
portant ; the last are. They should be spoken with care- 
fulness, distinctly and impressively, if any words are. But 
when the reader is intent upon getting in his mind the 
opening words of a new sentence, while pronouncing the 
closing words of the old one, he is very apt to slight the 
spoken words. The delivery is likely to lose in force, 
inflection, articulation ; and that part of the sentence which 
should be most distinct, which often contains the key to 
the thought that follows, is lost as the voice dies away in 
an inarticulate mumble. 

It is best to be off with the old sentence before you 



SOME GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. 95 

are on with the new. I suggest that you endeavor to 
read the last clause or words of sentences, with eyes 
upon the audience, speaking firmly and distinctly to the 
end. Then, at the pause at the end of the sentence, 
there is plenty of time in which to drop the eyes and begin 
reading again. Nothing is more annoying to a listener, 
nothing better calculated to destroy all the excellences 
of a production, than that the reader lose his place, stam- 
mer, and stop, while he searches the page for the wanted 
words. Better put your finger on the line and never lift 
your eyes from the page. 

I suggest that usually, when reading from a book, par- 
ticularly from the Book of books, you devote your whole 
attention to the words before you. Read slowly, naturally, 
reverentially ; but put yourself in the background. I 
think this should apply to the reading of hymns, too. 

I have seen readers, usually clergymen, who, having sev- 
eral selections to read, — for instance, from the Bible, — 
began to turn the leaves of the book, to find the next 
passage, before they ceased speaking the words of the 
first. It is all wrong. The hearer at once has his at- 
tention taken from the spoken words, and he wonders 
what is coming next. Read to the end of each selec- 
tion carefully, and seek for the next with due delibera- 
tion. Equally bad is the habit of shutting the book and 
turning to the next thing on the programme while still 
speaking. Then the spoken words lose all their mean- 
ing to the average hearer, who is intent upon watching 
the reader. 

In short, while reading or speaking, you should never 
do anything that will distract the attention of your hear- 
ers. It is hard enough to keep it, at the best. A bird 
flying in at an open window, a dog trotting down the aisle, 



g6 READING AND SPEAKING. 

an uneasy small boy, can take the attention of the audi- 
ence from the most eloquent speaker. I have seen a 
college president close an address to a chapelful of stu- 
dents with weighty and fitting and earnest words, at the 
same time tugging at his watch, which, seemingly more 
sensible of the fitness of things than he, refused to quit 
his pocket. It is safe to say that nine-tenths of his hearers 
were more interested in the struggle with the time-piece 
than in the words, important as they were. He could well 
have waited until quite through before ascertaining whether 
he had spoken too long, or not long enough, or just the 
proper time. 

You have all seen clergymen who ended their sermons 
by a general arrangement of the articles on the desk, — 
closing the Bible, putting the hymn-book carefully upon it, 
straightening out the big book-mark, putting the watch 
into one pocket and the handkerchief into another, turning 
down the pulpit lamp, and so on. And all this, perhaps, 
while the solemn words of an eloquent and able sermon 
were lingering on the air, and the congregation were wait- 
ing to bow their heads, while the preacher prayed that 
God would bless his words. But that congregation were 
not thinking of those solemn words, for the speaker had in 
an instant taken their thoughts from duty, devotion, eter- 
nity, God, to the time of day and the gas. The good man 
in the pulpit didn't know what he was doing. It was 
simply a habit ; but what a remarkably bad habit ! 

I have seen a college professor reading a learned and 
interesting lecture before a large and intelligent audience, 
and all the time, apparently, interested only in keeping the 
edges of his manuscript squared, and in seeing to it that 
the pages that he had read were placed in exactly the right 
spot on the desk. It would have been better even to 



SOME GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. 97 

have dropped each page on the floor as he read it ; for then 
he would have seemed to be lost in his subject. But you 
should never be so lost in your subject that you do not 
know exactly what you are about. At all events, acquire 
good habits before you permit yourself to lose yourself 
before an audience. 

I once attended a lecture in Chickering Hall, New York. 
It was delivered by a very presentable young man, and 
was really worth listening to ; but the whole effect was 
ruined by the drinking habit of the speaker. He seemed 
to be continually thirsty, and at the end of every paragraph 
stopped and deliberately drank from a glass of water on 
the desk, and with every draught smacked his lips approv- 
ingly. He had not spoken fifteen minutes before we were 
all waiting to see him take his next drink, and were all 
smiling at the accompanying smack. I remember that 
lecture now, after a lapse of years, only as an exhibition of 
very vulgar drinking. 

This brings to mind an anecdote that I have recently 
seen somewhere in print. It was told as illustrating the 
self-control of Pere Hyacinthe, the famous French pulpit 
orator. He was preaching with his wonted fire and fervor, 
and stopped an instant to moisten his lips. But the glass 
on the desk was empty. He thought to fill it from a 
pitcher beneath the desk ; but the pitcher, too, was empty. 
Then he asked for water, and waited quietly and silently 
until it was brought. He drank, and then, and not until 
then, took up his discourse and went on triumphantly ; 
and the audience were all ready to go on with him. Had 
he continued his sermon while the water was being fetched, 
the congregation would have been more intent upon watch- 
ing for the person who should bring it than upon the words 
of the speaker ; and he would have run the risk of having 



98 READING AND SPEAKING. 

an important thought interrupted, or a fine period ruined, 
by the advent of the water-carrier. 

Rest assured that your audience will follow your thoughts 
expressed in action, more intently than those expressed in 
words. If you feel a draught on the back of your neck, 
and glance around to find its source, you will instantly 
have the audience, not listening, but wondering what you 
did that for. Better stop deliberately and ask the proper 
person to close the opening which is causing the draught. 
Then, after waiting quietly until that is done, go on with 
your speech. Remember that you cannot make a move- 
ment on the platform which your hearers will not see. Do 
not imagine that you can slyly pull down a refractory cuff, 
or wriggle yourself into comfortable relations with your 
collar, unseen by the audience. At your first movement 
they cease to be auditors and become spectators, interested 
only in seeing what you are doing ; sympathizing perhaps 
with you in your endeavors, but — listening ? No. If the 
cuff must be pulled down, pull it down, and then go on 
with your speech. If the collar chafes, arrange it and then 
go on. Better still, pay some attention to these matters 
— they are not trifles — before facing your audience. 

I remember the hilarity a speaker occasioned — in the 
days when trousers were worn tighter than now — by ris- 
ing, and, as he walked forward to his place on the platform, 
endeavoring to kick down that aspiring garment, making 
movements not unlike those a neat cat makes after cross- 
ing a muddy street. That was much worse in its effect 
on the audience than the forgetfulness of a friend of mine, 
who lectured for an hour and a half one evening, in very 
correct attire, with his trousers rolled up about three inches. 
And there had been no weather report from London that 
day, either. He was intent on his subject, and so were his 



SOME GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. 99 

audience after they had become accustomed to his unusual 
appearance. But both of these speakers had to contend at 
first with an audience inclined to laugh at them. That is 
a misfortune to be avoided. 

These suggestions may seem to concern trifles. But, 
take my word for it, you will not think so when you come 
to face the Argus-eyed audience. 



READING AND SPEAKING. 



CHAPTER XL 
GESTURE. 

I say, but mark his gesture. Othello. 

There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very 
gesture. Winters Tale. 

Action and accent did they teach him then; 
" Thus must thou speak, and thus thy body bear." 

Love's Labor's Lost. 
Suit the action to the word : the word to the action. Hamlet. 

Great orators have been great orators, not on account 
of their gestures ; sometimes, in spite of them. We know 
of Clay that he made graceful gestures ; we read that 
Webster made few, and the only one that has been de- 
scribed violated all the rules laid down in the manuals 
of elocution. Matthews, in his " Oratory and Orators," 
says that Webster, speaking of the Buffalo platform in 
1848, said: "It is so rickety that it will hardly bear the 
fox-like tread of Mr. Van Buren." As he said " fox-like 
tread," he held out the palm of his left hand and ran the 
fingers of his right hand down the extended arm with a 
soft, rapid motion, as if to represent the kitten-like advance 
of the foxy advocate upon this rickety platform. "A shout 
of laughter testified to the aptness of this sign-teaching." 

You have often heard that Wendell Phillips made very 
few gestures, and yet his biographer says that he made 
many. They were so natural, he so exactly suited the 
action to the word, that the gestures, as gestures, made no 
impression on the audience. And that is exactly what all 
gestures should be. As Mr. Long says in his advice to 



GESTURE. 101 

young speakers (see Chapter XIII.), Do not "make" ges- 
tures ; the movements of the arms and hands that come 
unconsciously are best. 

But if that is true, why learn to breathe, to articulate? 
Why learn to be natural ? As I understand Mr. Long, 
and as I believe, the speaker — not the student — should not 
" make " gestures ; but it does not follow that the student 
should not learn something about gesturing. 

You have learned to control the lips and the tongue, so 
that they obey your will ; why not learn to control your 
arms and hands, so that they, too, will obey you? How? 
Well, one way is much like the way in which you learned 
to control your lips and tongue ; by the aid of a mirror. 
Stand before a glass and see what your arms and hands are 
doing. I know the sneer that is made at the "looking- 
glass orator." If by that is meant the man who rehearses 
before his mirror the gestures he will make in the speech 
he is to deliver at the banquet, or before the jury, or in the 
pulpit, or on the platform, then I find no fault with sneer 
or sneerer. But why should not the lad, the young man, 
in college or out, who is learning the rudiments of speech- 
making, not take some pains to find out how his arms are 
behaving ? And how can he better gain this knowledge 
than before the mirror? That is, to his eyes, what the 
phonograph or the mimicking teacher is to his ears. 

A wise teacher or critic can help you much ; but if you 
can see yourself, you can make better progress. But what 
are you to aim at ? Simply to get command of the arms 
and hands, and indeed of the whole body. I do not believe 
in any theory of gesture which teaches what gesture 
means this and what gesture expresses that. That theory 
belongs more to the actor's art than to the orator's. Not 
that practice on that theory will not be advantageous ; not 



102 READING AND SPEAKING. 

that the Delsartian decomposing exercises and all the 
others are not excellent. But they are excellent only in 
that they give control of the limbs, of the body. So is 
fencing excellent, and boxing, too, as aids to the speaker. 
Anything that puts the awkward, unruly, always-in-the-way 
members under control is excellent. 

So I advise you to " make gestures " in your practice. 
When you are to " speak a piece," not only study its 
delivery, but study its gestures. Study to decide just 
where and how you would gesticulate were you speaking 
those words extempore. Do not strive to make compli- 
cated, elaborate gestures, but seek for such movements 
as will emphasize the thought, illustrate the thought. In 
gesture, as in everything else, strive for naturalness. Bear 
in mind that gestures are the least important part of your 
speech, but that they are worth making well. You ought 
to make them in your routine speaking, whether you think 
they add to or detract from the force of your speaking. 
Study your style, and after much study decide whether 
you ought to make more gestures or fewer, or none at all. 
You may be given to too much gesture. Restrain yourself 
sternly. Many a good speech has been spoiled by elabo- 
rate and constant gesture. Do you think you make too 
few ? Do not make more unless they make themselves. 
Now, of course, I am speaking of your style as a speaker, 
not as a student of speaking. 

I have no rules to give. I have nothing to say about 
"prone" or "supine" hands. I simply say : In some way, 
get control of your hands and arms ! ; get accustomed to the 
"feeling" of putting them out, emphasizing with them, 
pointing with them, gesturing with them. And remem- 
ber that gestures are made with the hands, not with the 
arms alone. You have seen beginners make gestures with 



GESTURE. 103 

their arms ; the hands were mere appendages, without life 
or feeling. Put out your hands, raise your hands, point 
with your fingers, feel your gestures to your finger-tips. 

If I might make a list of "don'ts," after the fashion of 
the day, it would read : — 

Don't hurry with your gestures. Start them before the 
thought they are to emphasize, and stop them after you 
are through, not before. 

Don't let the thumbs hang limp on the hand. 

Don't wriggle the fingers as the hands hang by your 
side. 

Don't look at your hands as you gesture. 

Don't make gestures with your arms. 

Don't hold the fingers out stiffly. 

Don't let the fingers curl up limply. 

Don't hold the hands as though you had bird-shot in 
each hollow, and feared that it would roll out. 

Don't look where you point, unless you want the audi- 
ence to look there too. 

Don't make a gesture for the sake of the gesture. 

Don't strive to make odd or unusual gestures. 

Don't make a gesture that doesn't mean something to 
you. 

Don't make a gesture that seems to you unnatural be- 
cause somebody says it's a "pretty gesture." 

Don't make too many gestures. 

Don't " make " any gestures. Let them make them- 
selves. 

I have a public speaker in mind whose gestures are, to 
many who hear him, a constant grief. And yet he never 
makes an awkward movement ; he is perfectly graceful ; 
he seems to have absolute control of his hands : he can 
express much with them, and he does. He gesticulates 



104 READING AND SPEAKING. 

constantly ; his hands are almost never still. There is not 
a particle of repose, and, so, many a hearer becomes fasci- 
nated with those never-resting, sinuous, graceful, expres- 
sive hands, and what the man says becomes of secondary 
importance. 

I have in mind another public speaker who stands at 
his desk and reads from his manuscript, and never raises a 
finger ; and sometimes I wonder how he can help empha- 
sizing a point now and then, and thus adding to the 
effect of his excellent discourse. Here are two extremes. 
Both portraits are drawn from life. Of the two I pre- 
fer the latter style. Neither is good. There is a golden 
mean. 

Among my pupils I almost always find that the best 
athletes make the best appearance on the platform. Men 
who in the gymnasium, by club-swinging, by running, by 
wrestling, by bar exercise, by exercise on the flying rings 
and on the trapeze, by fencing, by boxing, have learned to 
control every muscle, show that control when they walk, 
when they stand, when they gesture. And so I say, get 
this control in some way, and add to it by all the practice 
in speaking, possible. Walk to the platform firmly, delib- 
erately ; bow, if you please, quietly ; stand, well poised on 
your hips, in an easy, not a slouching, attitude. Move 
when you please, and as though you meant to move and 
were not afraid to. 

Here is another list of "don'ts " : — 

Don't scrape the floor with your feet as you walk. 

Don't look down, while going upon a platform and walk- 
ing across it, as though searching for a stray dime. 

Don't swing your arms as though they were fastened to 
your shoulders by pins. 



GESTURE, 105 

Don't walk to the extreme edge of the platform. 

Don't bow as though your spine was a poker with a 
hinge near the lower terminus. 

Don't bow as though the hinge was in your neck. 

Don't think that you must keep your eyes on your audi- 
ence while you are bowing. 

Don't put one foot forward and try to bow over it. 

Don't scrape one foot backward when you bow. 

Don't forget to bow when you are through. It looks 
well for a young man to be respectful. 

Don't stand in the "position of a soldier." 

Don't stand with the toes of both feet to an imaginary 
line. 

Don't straddle. 

Don't sag down on one hip and thus bend the other 
knee. 

Don't cross one foot over the other as you walk, while 
speaking, or while quitting the platform. 

Don't, at the end of a sentence, stop, walk deliberately 
just so far, and then begin again. 

Don't hurry in quitting the stage (unless the audience 
are unfriendly and seem inclined to egg you off). 

These "Don'ts " leave you little to do except to walk in 
a natural, gentlemanly way to the platform, neither stamp- 
ing, striding, nor mincing ; to stop, well back from the 
front ; to bow as a young man should who has the privilege 
of speaking before such an audience. This bow should be 
a grave and dignified bending of the head and body. A 
very slight moving forward from the hips. It should not 
be hurried ; neither should you be in haste to begin your 
speech. 

Begin in a clear, natural voice, that you are quite certain 
will reach every person in the audience. If, when you 



106 READING AND SPEAKING. 

begin to speak, there is the buzz of conversation, the rattle 
of papers, the flutter of fans, speak so loudly, so clearly, so 
distinctly, that every one will know that you are speaking, 
and stop the noise. Having thus secured attention, drop 
the voice until you are speaking in your most natural key, 
and with your natural force, always making sure that you 
are heard. After talking a bit to one part of the audience, 
turn to another. Do it deliberately and do it while talk- 
ing. Never walk forward as though that was the place 
in your speech where you had decided to walk. Make 
every movement mean something. 

There is a curious tendency in many speakers, especially 
beginners, to step one foot over the other in moving on 
the platform, thus for an instant presenting a most awk- 
ward and cross-legged appearance. The explanation is 
simple. You think you will move to the right. Uncon- 
sciously you move the body with the thought, and the 
weight falls on the right foot. Now if you step it must be 
with the left foot ; and so if you are on the left side of the 
platform and are to move to the right, you will lift the 
left foot over the right. Try it and see. The remedy is 
simple : throw the weight upon the left foot when about 
to move to the right, and vice versa. 

Do not move too much. You have seen speakers who 
constantly moved, not walked, as though standing on a 
hot stove. Others will stand as though their shoes were 
screwed to the floor. Others will sag down upon one hip 
and cock the other knee forward, in the burlesque " states- 
man attitude." When you get before the big mirror 
that I recommend, you can see for yourself whether you 
have these faults. Lacking the mirror, ask that useful 
friend, of whom I have spoken, to tell you what you are 
doing. 



GESTURE. 107 

Practice faithfully in all these matters of breathing, 
articulation, delivery, gesture, attitude, and when you go 
before an audience strive to forget them all, and put your 
whole soul and your well-schooled body into your speech. 
Then you will speak. 



IOS READING AND SPEAKING. 



CHAPTER XII. 

PHYSICAL EARNESTNESS. 

Come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech. 

Hamlet. 
Let us talk in good earnest. As You Like It. 

Are you in earnest, then, my lord? Titus Andronicus. 

In " Before an Audience," of which I have before spoken, 
Mr. Shepard has a chapter entitled " Physical Earnestness." 
Every speaker ought to read it. I will quote briefly from 
it. 

"With an adequate use of his will, an adequate knowledge of what 
he is about, the speaker will make a right use of his physical organiza- 
tion, — will be physically, as well as morally or spiritually, in earnest. 
If he makes no use of his will, forgets it, and ' thinks only of his sub- 
ject, 1 or of the laws of emphasis taught by the elocution books, he will 
make no use, or he will make a misuse of his physical organization. 
If the will be dormant, the physical organization will be of no assistance 
to him ; will be a hindrance to him the rather." 

I agree with this heartily, but I would modify the thought 
a little and say that when the speaker has " an adequate 
knowledge of what he is about " ; knows what he is to 
say, and how he should say it ; has mastered the rules of 
this particular "elocution book," so that he does not have 
to think of them, — so that he applies them unconsciously, 
— then he must use his will in order to make a right use 
of his physical organization. He must be physically in 
earnest. But I would not modify what follows a particle. 
It is an admirable setting forth of an important fact. The 



PHYSICAL EARNESTNESS. IO9 

advice, moreover, is just as good for the college or uni- 
versity student as for the theological seminary student ; 
just as good for the would-be lawyer or teacher as for the 
would-be preacher. 

" The way to be vivacious is to be vivacious. The education is all 
done upon one side of the man, — the inside, the intellectual side, — and 
it fails in not getting in something in the way of 4 earnest ' education on 
the physical side, — the outside, — which it is the fashion to look upon 
as the lower side. But it is the side of the emotional nature, which is 
five-eighths of a speaker's success ; it is the side of common sense, of 
practical judgment, of mesmeric power, of vivacity, of unction, of ade- 
quate voice, of knowing what you are about. There is a fallacy and 
mischief in tracing all the short-comings of the preacher [speaker] to 
his deficiency in moral or spiritual earnestness. It is not earnest- 
ness in the ordinary sense that the man needs. He is probably 
more in earnest in that sense than he ever was ; more intellectually, 
morally, spiritually in earnest. It is physical earnestness that he 
needs." 

I have an incident in mind that admirably illustrates 
this point. I am sure Mr. Shepard would have been glad 
to use it. Would that he were alive that he might, and 
that he might do more good work for the public speakers 
that are to come. The incident was told to me by a dear 
friend, an old gentleman. 

" I was riding on the cars one day when, at a certain 
station, a young man came in. I was glad to see him, for 
he was one of my boys ; I had known him from babyhood. 
He had graduated from college with honor, then had a 
brilliant career in one of the best theological seminaries in 
the country, then spent three years in the universities of 
Europe, and now was home and looking for a charge. 
You wouldn't think such a man would have to look long ; 
but I knew that he had preached for congregation after 
congregation, and no one ' called ' him. 



IIO READING AND SPEAKING. 

"'Where are you going, Charlie?' I asked, as he sat 
down by my side. 

" ' Oh, up to Blankville to preach for them. No use, 
though, I suppose,' he added, gloomily ; ' no one seems to 
want me. I don't understand it.' 

" ' But I do, Charlie,' said I ; ' and you must let me tell 
you. You preach as though you didn't believe a word of 
what you say, and as though you didn't want any one else 
to believe it either. Now, to-morrow you will preach in 
Blankville, and unless you wake up, you won't get another 
chance. Do you go into that pulpit and preach to those 
people as though you thought it was the last time you 
were to preach salvation to dying men, and the last chance 
of salvation they were to have. Be dead in earnest ; pound 
the Bible ; wake them all up ; wake yourself up ! ' 

" Charlie had got pretty red by this time. ' I don't want 
to make a fool of myself,' he growled. 

" ' Yes you do ; that kind of a fool. Take my advice. 
Good-bye,' and I got off the train, and left the young 
preacher in no very good humor. The next I heard from 
Charlie was when a telegram reached me from him. It 
read : — 

" ' Veni, vidi, vici ; and I owe it all to you.' 

" He had preached three times, and then received a 
unanimous call. He's there yet, and very successful. 
There's a true story. Tell it to your students in elocu- 
tion." 

I have, often, and am glad to do it again. It is better 
than a volume of rules. Be in earnest. Yes. But that 
is not enough. Let your hearers know and see that you 
are in earnest. Make them believe it. It is said that that 
is too much like acting. Yes, it is acting, if you are not 
in earnest ; if you do not believe what you say. But you 



PHYSICAL EARNESTNESS. 1 1 I 

have no business before an audience unless you "have 
something that you desire very much to say," as Colonel 
Higginson puts it. But how about declamations and col- 
lege orations, and that sort of thing? you say. 

I believe — I know — that the student can acquire 
physical earnestness, and he should strive to acquire 
it just as assiduously as he cultivates his voice, or 
his articulatory powers. Declamations, college orations, 
are to give him a chance to do this. I have often had 
students, whom I was imploring to be more earnest in 
manner, say, " I can't do it with this declamation. If it 
were my own production I could be earnest." But I have 
never known any one of these same students to deliver his 
own production a whit more earnestly. No ; there is no 
good reason why you should not be in earnest in speaking 
even a cut-and-dried declamation. I do not mean that I 
should expect you to select a declamation that expressed 
opinions quite contrary to your own, and then try to 
deliver it as though you meant every word of it. That, 
indeed, would be acting ; and while it is not bad practice 
for developing physical earnestness, still I do not recom- 
mend such practice. If your preparatory work is in dec- 
lamation, choose, for your speaking, words that express 
opinions which you hold. Then you simply adopt the 
phraseology of the writer, with which to express your own 
views ; and there can be no excuse for lack of vivacity, — 
of expressed earnestness. I repeat it : physical earnest- 
ness can be acquired, and ought to be acquired, while 
you are in the formative period. Then, when you go out 
into the world, and find you have a message to deliver to 
waiting men, they will listen to it, and they will believe 
it and you more readily than though you had waited to do 
your practicing upon them. 



112 READING AND SPEAKING. 

When, in 1883, Mr. Matthew Arnold came to this coun- 
try, there were thousands eager to hear what the great 
English critic had to say. Let me quote to you several 
paragraphs from the New York Times s report of his first 
lecture in New York city : — 

" Chickering Hall was crowded to its walls, by a brilliant audience, 
assembled to hear Mr. Matthew Arnold's first lecture. 

" Mr. Arnold gazed around the gallery, and began his discourse in a 
rather low and harsh tone. He held his printed lecture in his hand and 
referred to it almost every moment. While he was speaking he made 
no gestures, but constantly turned his head from side to side. He 
did not open his mouth once wide enough to show his teeth, and 
pursed up his lips in such a way as to smother most of his consonants. 
He dropped his voice so, at the close of each sentence, that the last 
two or three words were wholly inaudible at a distance of twenty 
feet. 

" During the first part of his lecture he was interrupted by cries of 
' Louder ! ' ' Can't hear you ! ' He did not speak any more loudly, 
however. ' Mr. Arnold, we can 1 t hear you,' said a voice from the rear 
of the house. The lecturer then spoke a trifle more loudly. 

"Many persons remarked, while leaving the hall, that they had not 
heard half of it." 

Now, to what were due the obvious faults in Mr. Arnold's 
delivery, his faulty enunciation, his indistinct articulation, 
his failure to read loud enough to be heard ? Lack of ex- 
perience before audiences ? Oh, no. Lack of earnestness 
of purpose ? No. Mr. Arnold was one of the most 
earnest men that lived. He was nothing if not earnest. 
He believed every word he said. Mr. Arnold had a total 
lack of ability to express this earnestness. He had no 
physical earnestness. His admirable essays lost much of 
their charm when he read them. Give to such a man as he 
some elocutionary training, some idea of the importance of 
physical earnestness, and with what pleasure would the 
waiting thousands have listened to him. 



PHYSICAL EARNESTNESS. 113 

The result of this first lecture before an American 
audience was good. Mr. Arnold, influenced by his friends 
and the manager of his lecture course, put himself in the 
hands of a teacher of elocution, and in a few weeks was 
able to go on with his public speaking with fair success. 
He managed to make himself heard. 

Right in this connection let me refer to the case of 
another famous Englishman, Canon Farrar. He, too, 
came to this country as a lecturer, and the Times, in re- 
porting his first public appearance, said that his " voice 
was murderous," and that he did not know what to do with 
his hands. Canon Farrar was quite surprised, so he said, 
at this exhibition of the "frankness of the American press" ; 
and with equal frankness admitted that he was, he knew, 
perfectly destitute of any powers of oratory, and had had 
absolutely no training in elocution. Thereupon the Times 
answered, that as a lecturer is a public performer, he has 
no business upon the platform unless he can supplement 
his written matter with oratorical graces. That he is an 
accomplished writer does not prevent him from being an 
incompetent lecturer. It added : " It is true that if he be 
notorious enough many people will pay money merely to 
look at him. But in that case he is not a lecturer, but 
simply a show ; and there is a lack of dignity and delicacy 
in a man making a show of himself for pay." 

These last words are too harsh to be applied to such a 
man as Canon Farrar, but there is solid truth at the bottom 
of them. 

We have wandered a little from the subject just now in 
hand ; let us return to it. It was physical earnestness, I 
am sure, that Emerson was thinking of when he wrote : — 

" He [some one who is looking for an orator] finds himself, per- 
haps, in the Senate, when the forest has cast out some wild, black- 



114 READING AND SPEAKING. 

browed bantling, to show the same energy in the crowd of officials 
which he had learned in driving cattle to the hills, or in scrambling 
through thickets in a winter forest, or through the swamp and river 
for his game. In the folds of his brow, in the majesty of his mien, 
Nature has marked her son ; and in that artificial and perhaps unworthy 
place and company shall remind you of the lessons taught him in 
earlier days by the torrent in the gloom of the pine woods, when he 
was the companion of the mountain cattle, of jays and foxes, and a 
hunter of the bear. Or you may find him in some lowly Bethel, by 
the seaside, where a hard-featured, scarred, and wrinkled Methodist 
becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he pours out 
the abundant streams of his thought through a language all glittering 
and fiery with imagination, — a man who never knew a looking-glass 
or a critic, — a man whom college drill or patronage never made, and 
whom praise cannot spoil, — a man who conquers his audience by 
infusing his soul into them, and speaks by the right of being the per- 
son in the assembly who has the most to say ; and so makes all other 
speakers appear little and cowardly before his face. For the time his 
exceeding life throws all other gifts into the shade, — philosophy 
speculating on its own breath, taste, learning, and all, — and yet how 
every listener gladly consents to be nothing in his presence, and to 
share this surprising emanation and to be steeped and ennobled in the 
new wine of this eloquence ! " 

What was Patrick Henry's famous speech but a tre- 
mendous exhibition of physical earnestness, if the account 
given in Randall's " Life of Jefferson " be true ? 

" Henry rose with an unearthly fire burning in his eye. He com- 
menced somewhat calmly, but the smothered excitement began more 
and more to play upon his features and thrill in the tones of his voice. 
The tendons of his neck stood out white and rigid like whip cords. 
His voice grew louder and louder, until the walls of the building, and 
all within them, seemed to shake and rock in its tremendous vibrations. 
Finally, his pale face and glaring eye became terrible to look upon. 
Men leaned forward in their seats, with their heads strained forward, 
their faces pale, and their eyes glaring like the speakers. His last 
exclamation, ' Give me liberty, or give me death ! ' was like the shout 
of the leader which turns back the rout of battle. The old man from 



PHYSICAL EARNESTNESS. I I 5 

whom this tradition was derived added that, when the orator sat down, 
he himself felt sick with excitement. Every eye yet gazed entranced 
on Henry. It seemed as if a word from him would have led to any 
wild explosion of violence. Men looked beside themselves." 

Professor Moses Coit Tyler in his "Life of Patrick 
Henry " quotes John Roane, who heard the speech, as 
saying that " the orator's voice, countenance, and gestures 
gave an irresistible force to his words, which no description 
could make intelligible to one who had never seen him or 
heard him speak." 

It certainly is not necessary for me to say that physical 
earnestness, not backed by moral or spiritual earnestness, 
is but the tinkling brass, the sounding cymbal ; but it does 
seem necessary to say more than once, and as emphatically 
as possible, that, without physical earnestness, moral or 
spiritual earnestness too often fails to make itself known ; 
does not get a hearing. Do not misunderstand me. I am 
not advocating rant and bluster on the platform. I would 
not have you " tear a passion to tatters, to very rags," 
even in the endeavor to acquire physical earnestness. 
Spurgeon is quite right when he says that " it is an inflic- 
tion, not to be endured twice, to hear a brother, who mis- 
takes perspiration for inspiration, tear along like a wild 
horse with a hornet in his ear till he has no more wind, 
and must needs pause to pump his lungs full again." 

Dr. Sumner Ellis in his " Life of Edwin H. Chapin," 
one of the most eloquent men this country has produced, 
writes thus: — 

" But a supple and powerful body and a facile and ample voice do 
not make an orator ; but are only the needful agents or instruments of 
the oratorical genius, which is a higher gift. What the superb organ 
is to the gifted musician and his music, such are the bodily powers to 
the eloquent soul. They are not the basis of oratory, but only its 



Il6 READING AND SPEAKING. 

aids. Back of action and voice lies the secret of speech that charms 
and overpowers. In all ages the wise ones have heaped satire on the 
rant and noise, born of the abundant flesh, which affect to be elo- 
quence. In his earlier life Chapin may have been sometimes betrayed 
by the exuberance of his physical powers into this fault so exposed to 
satire. He confessed to having lost the favor of the Boston Mercantile 
Library Association by the boisterousness of his first lecture before 
it. His ordinary preaching, in that heyday of his life, when his inner 
resources scarcely balanced his outer energies, was, no doubt, as 
largely mixed with physical forces as the laws of a sound criticism 
would allow. It was, however, a coveted and not an injurious magnet- 
ism to the people, who flocked to have the fiery currents sweep 
through them, and a sure sign of a ripe greatness of no ordinary type, 
since it is the law of eloquence, with the advancing years to draw less 
of its sway from the body and more from the soul." 

Let me warn you against seeking to hide poverty of 
thought, want of true feeling, behind an excess of physical 
earnestness and simulated emotion. Henry Ward Beecher 
used to tell this story of his father, Dr. Lyman Beecher : 
Coming home from church one day, he said, "It seems to 
me I never made a worse sermon than I did this morning." 
"Why, father," said Henry, "I never heard you preach so 
loud in all my life." " That is the way ; " said the Doctor, 
"I always holler when I haven't anything to say." 

Dr. William Mathews, in his " Oratory and Orators," 
very truly says : — 

"Force is partly a physical product, and partly mental; it is the 
life of oratory, which gives it breath, and fire, and power. It is the 
electrical element; that which smites, penetrates, and thrills. It does 
not necessarily imply vehemence. There may be energy in suppressed 
feeling, in deep pathos, in simple description, nay, even in silence 
itself." 

Yes ; and to express all this, accomplish all this, there 
must be physical earnestness. 

After the centennial celebration of the Inauguration 



PHYSICAL EARNESTNESS. WJ 

of Washington, in New York city, Dr. MacArthur in the 
Christian Inquirer thus gave his impressions of the oratory 
at the banquet : — 

" Mayor Grant presided with dignity and fitness in every way; but 
his voice is thin, and when raised sufficiently to be heard in so large 
a hall, it became shrill. 

" Governor Hill's address was well written; but although his voice 
was clear, his delivery lacked most of the elements of impressive 
oratory, as he read every word he uttered. 

" Ex-President Cleveland spoke from memory. He was more dis- 
tinctly heard, and many of his utterances were heartily appreciated. 

"Gov. Fitzhugh Lee and Senator Daniels, both of Virginia, spoke 
with freedom, and, although at times they were explosive, and at other 
times their voices would drop at the ends of sentences, they were heard 
with reasonable pleasure. 

" Senator Evarts spoke in so low a tone that only those within a few 
feet of him could hear even a syllable that he uttered. 

" President Eliot of Harvard College was received with enthusiasm : 
his intellectual countenance arrested attention and awakened interest. 
His voice was clear, his enunciation perfect, and his rhetoric beautiful. 
One regrets that he did not declaim his short and finished speech. , He 
was obliged to look at his notes at the beginning of almost every sen- 
tence that he uttered. This method of delivery detracted seriously 
from the effect of his otherwise admirable address. It certainly is 
strange that a college president could not commit to memory a short 
speech ; he would not permit a sophomore to speak in a college class- 
room as he spoke at this historic banquet. 

" But Mr. James Russell Lowell was the greatest disappointment ; he 
could be heard only by those within a few yards of where he stood ; 
he spoke also in a hesitating, doubtful, and apparently uninterested 
manner, so far as he himself was concerned. We had heard so much 
of his ability as an after-dinner speaker that expectation was great ; 
and the disappointment was correspondingly great. He spoke for a 
time memoriter ; then he stopped suddenly and completely, and was 
obliged to stand in silence until he could adjust his glasses and find his 
place on his notes. The disconnected character of his sentences for a 
time afterward indicated that he did not find the right place. Then 
came a minute or two of free utterance, then again dead silence, a 



I I S READING AND SPEAKING. 

search for the lost glasses, and a fumbling of notes for the lost place. 
His address was marked by a tinge of pessimism, not to use a stronger 
term. His speech reads well when printed from his notes, but it was 
heard with much disappointment. 

" Ex-President Hayes surprised his best friends, and amazed and 
confounded his enemies, by the clearness of his thought and the vigor 
of his speech. 

"General Sherman was amusing and forceful; he made a good 
speech, without making any effort, apparently, to do more than talk 
out his thought in his simple, honest, rugged way. 

" It must be admitted that the speech of the evening was made by 
President Harrison. The hour was late, or rather, early, and people 
were weary ; but he aroused enthusiasm to a much higher tone than it 
had reached during the evening. His style is graceful, his gestures 
flowing, his speech crystalline in clearness. All his thoughts were 
pervaded by a spirit of noble patriotism and of genuine Christian 
devotion. 11 

It is pretty evident from this description that the suc- 
cessful orators — and how few they were — had physical 
earnestness, and obeyed the laws of elocutionary training; 
and that the failures were due to a disregard of these laws 
and an utter absence of physical earnestness. 



SUGGESTIONS BY EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS. II9 



CHAPTER XIII. 
SUGGESTIONS BY EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS. 

A precedent of wisdom, above all princes. King Henry VIII. 
And I will stoop and humble my intents 
To your well-practic'd, wise directions. 

King Henry IV. 

Full of wise care is this thy counsel. King Richard III. 

While preparing this book, I took the liberty of writing 
to several gentlemen, who have a wide and deserved repu- 
tation for their oratory, asking them for the suggestions 
they would make to young men whom they wished to start 
right, on the path leading to successful public speaking. 
They were asked to make suggestions especially as to 
maiuier. "Of course," I wrote, "the foundation of all suc- 
cessful public speaking must be knowledge. The speaker 
must have something to say. But having something to 
say, how shall he say it ? How shall he acquire a good 
manner ? " I knew that advice from men of their position 
and reputation would infinitely outweigh with young men 
the words of any Professor of elocution and oratory. I am, 
therefore, very glad to be able to print the following letters, 
and to express my hearty thanks to the gentlemen who 
wrote them, for enabling me to do such a service to the 
young men who shall study this book. 

From Col. Thomas W. Higginson. 

"Dear Professor Smith. — I am very glad to hear that you are 
interesting yourself in training young men to speak in public. In 
my opinion there is no part of training more important in a country 



120 READING AND SPEAKING. 

like ours, where each man is to do his part in conducting the govern- 
ment, and where so much of his influence must proceed from meeting 
his fellow-citizens face to face, and holding his own among them. 
The frank encounter of the platform, the canvas, or the town meeting, 
takes the place in our time of the old sword-and-buckler controversy ; 
but it calls for many of the same qualities, and a man must always 
have his weapons in good order. The general aptitude of Americans 
for this kind of service, as compared with the race from which we 
chiefly sprang, is very noticeable, and an important result of our civ- 
ilization. 

"I am glad if you have found my little book, ' Hints on Writing and 
Speech-making,' of any service to you, and shall feel honored by any 
use you can make of it in your forthcoming work. 
"Cordially yours, 
"THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON." 

I have already quoted from the valuable little book to 
which Colonel Higginson refers. I cannot do better than 
to supplement his letter by further extracts from it. 

" The number of graduates going forth each year from our American 
colleges must be several thousand. . . . The majority of all these 
graduates will be called upon, at some time or other during their lives, 
to make a speech, as will thousands of young Americans who have 
never seen the inside of college or academy. Perhaps a few hints on 
speech-making may not be unavailing, when addressed to this large 
class by a man much older — one who has made so many speeches that 
the process has almost ceased to have terror to him, whatever dismay 
it may sometimes cause to his hearers. Certainly there are a few sug- 
gestions, not to be found in the elocutionary manuals, and which would 
have saved the present writer much trouble and some anguish, had any 
one thought of offering them to him when he left college. 

"The first requisite of speech-making is, of course, to have some- 
thing to say. But this does not merely mean something that may be 
said ; it means something that must be said. . . . The first rule for 
public speaking, therefore, is, Have something that you desire very 
much to say. 

" The second rule is, Always speak in a natural key, and in a con- 
versational manner. . . . But how to reach that easy tone is the 



SUGGESTIONS BY EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS. 121 

serious question. ... If people are shy and awkward, and conscious 
about their speeches, how shall they gain an easy and unconstrained 
bearing ? That is, how shall they begin their speeches that way ? — for 
after the beginning, it is not so hard to go on. There is one very 
simple method, and yet one I have seldom known to fail. Suppose the 
occasion to be a public dinner. You have somebody by your side to 
whom you have been talking ; to him your manner was undoubtedly 
natural ; and if you can only carry along into your public speech that 
conversational flavor of your private talk, the battle is gained. How, 
then, to achieve that result? In this easy way : Express to your neigh- 
bor, conversationally, the thought, whatever it is, with which you mean 
to begin your public speech. Then, when you rise to speak, say merely 
what will be perfectly true, ' I was just saying to the gentleman who 
sits beside me, that — ' and then you repeat your remark over again. 
You thus make the last words of your private talk the first words of 
your public address, and the conversational manner is secured. This 
suggestion originated, I believe, with a man of inexhaustible fertility in 
public speech, the Rev. E. E. Hale. I have often availed myself of it, 
and have often been thanked by others for suggesting it to them." 

But I have quoted all that I ought. Read Colonel Hig- 
ginson's book. 

From the Hon. Seth Low, President of Columbia College. 

"My Dear Sir. — Effective public speaking is like the Chinese 
cook's receipt : ' When it tastes so, it is all right. 1 It seems not pos- 
sible to define that < so' in a way to be of much sendee. Even in the 
point of manner, that which is natural to one might be intolerable in 
another. Certainly" I think, the best manner is the quiet, unaffected 
style one would assume in talking to a handful, with few gestures. 
Candor, sincerity, and an absence of affectation, with an utterance so 
clear as to be heard without effort, may be relied upon, I think, to gain 
the attention of an audience. Only the matter will hold it. The 
counter influence of the interested audience on the speaker will produce 
the necessary animation. Doubtless this will show itself in different 
forms with different men. It seems to me the best advice is, simply, 
to be natural. It is essential, I think, that the orator, in speaking, 
should forget himself. These generalizations do not appear to me to 



122 READING AND SPEAKING. 

be worth printing, but they are equally at your service, to use or not, 
as you see fit. I have desired simply to show my sympathy with the 
work you are trying to do. 

"Respectfully, SETH LOW." 

From Edward Everett Hale. 
The Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., writes : — 

" I have not myself a great deal of faith in the usual instruction in 
elocution ; but I think the training of the voice in singing is of value to 
the public speaker. Probably the phonograph will do more than any 
teacher. It is the power which has the gift to make us ' hear ourselves 
as others hear us.' I shall look forward to your book ; certain to learn 
from it myself much that I need." 

From Gen. Stewart L. Woodford. 

"I am glad that you are preparing such a book as you suggest. 
While I do not know that I can give any hint as to methods in speak- 
ing that shall be worth publication, I still wish that I could enforce 
upon young men who are beginning to speak in public the wisdom of 
trying to speak naturally. This seems to me the secret of eloquence. 
Perhaps Hamlet puts it as well in his advice to the players as it has 
ever been put. 

"With cordial wishes for your success in your good work, I am, 
truly yours, 

"STEWART L. WOODFORD." 

From the Hon. John D. Long. 

" There is very little that any speaker can give in the way of instruc- 
tion. As no man knows the sound of his own voice, so no speaker 
knows how he ' does it. 1 There must of course be a natural fitness ; 
but training and preparation do very much. A young man will do well 
to commit pieces in good English, and thereby improve his style and 
vocabulary. He should avoid ' making ' gestures ; for all ' made ' ges- 
tures are artificial ; and the motions of the hand and arm which come 
unconsciously are best and are enough. He should cultivate a natural, 
easy tone and articulation. He should speak with especial clearness 
and distinctness, putting his voice at the very outlet of his mouth, and 



SUGGESTIONS BY EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS. 1 23 

as little way back from it as possible. He should endeavor to give 
constant relief to the matter of his speech in the way of touches (not 
too thick or frequent) of color, sentiment, humor, etc. Let him not be 
too much afraid of florid or enthusiastic accompaniments. They will 
gradually tone themselves, and something of the sort is necessary to 
win an audience. Above all, he should be in dead earnest. Earnest- 
ness will make any speech good ; but it must be an earnestness which 
makes itself felt; not always by vehemence; sometimes by its quiet 
intensity. With kind regards, very truly yours, 

"JOHN D. LONG." 

In the letter Mr. Long asked, " Can I do anything 
better for you than my article in the Writer which I send 
you ? " While the article has more to do with matter than 
manner, and thus does not lie quite within the province of 
this book, still I am sure that / cannot do anything better 
for you than to reproduce it ; for (it cannot be repeated 
too often), the matter, not the manner, is the speech. 
Have something to say. Here is Mr. Long's advice ; and 
good advice it is : — 

" In response to your inquiry, I must say that I have no well-settled 
method of preparing speeches. In case of an argument, such as an 
argument before a committee or a jury, the best plan is, of course, to 
saturate one's self with the facts and statistics of the matter in hand, to 
become infused with the whole atmosphere of the circumstances and 
interests, then to make a skeleton arrangement of points leading to the 
conclusion to be enforced, and finally to trust to the occasion for the 
fitting words in which to give expression to the argument. 

"As to set speeches of the more oratorical sort, I have tried all 
methods. Sometimes I write, and then read from manuscript, which 
is apt to detract from the interest of the speech, and to impair the 
sympathetic relation between the speaker and his audience. Sometimes 
I write, commit carefully, and repeat from memory, which is the usual 
and a wise practice with nearly all speakers. Sometimes I arrange a 
line of thought and illustration, putting headings on a piece of paper, 
or, what is quite as easy, fixing them in my mind, and depending on 
the moment of speaking for the fitting words. Sometimes I speak ex- 



124 READING AND SPEAKING. 

temporaneously, both as to words and to material. I have failed with 
each method, and succeeded with each method. I succeeded hand- 
somely (for me) in some of the first speeches I ever attempted, thirty 
years ago, and have lamentably failed in recent ones. The same 
speech, delivered, so far as I could see, in the same manner, has been 
at one time and place a success, and at another a dismal failure. 

"I am inclined to think, therefore, that the result depends often 
largely upon the atmosphere of the particular occasion reacting upon 
the speaker. I have found myself pumping hard and dry before a 
small, scattered audience, half filling a hall, and hanging back in the 
rear of it ; boys playing a drum-beat on the floor with their heels, and 
stragglers loitering in and out at the doors ; and at another time, with 
the same speech, in a great hall, before a mighty audience, where there 
was upon me not only the most intense nervous, but the most intense 
physical strain, I have found myself sailing, it seemed to me, like a ship 
under full sail before a fresh breeze. I have been indeed led to believe 
that anything that tends to physical tension and excitement, like the 
effort to fill a large hall and to hold the attention of a great audience, is 
a help in public speaking, and gives tension and excitement to the 
nervous and mental machinery. 

" Few men make speeches without carefully preparing them before- 
hand. It is rather amusing that so many speakers try to produce the 
impression that they speak without having made ready. Sometimes it 
is by beginning with the conventional statement that the call upon them 
is unexpected, or that they have been absorbed with other demands 
upon their time. Sometimes in the opening or close, which has been 
so carefully fixed in the memory that the speaker is secure of it, he 
injects a word or reference caught from the pending occasion, thus 
giving the impression that the whole thing is a present inspiration. 
Then, too, not to put too fine a point on the matter, there are some 
who on this subject do, with the most unconscionable abandonment, 
verify the Scripture that all men are liars. I remember a most dis- 
tinguished man telling me that a long speech of his at a public meeting 
was extemporaneous, when I read it the evening before set up in cold 
type for the forthcoming morning paper. Some of the best stump 
speakers very wisely repeat the same speech as they go from place to 
place, as you will learn when you go with them. Some of these frankly 
acknowledge this method ; others will so emphatically assure you that 
they never speak twice alike that you are bound to credit them with an 



SUGGESTIONS BY EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS. 1 25 

honest delusion. You rarely listen to an after-dinner speech, however 
glibly it rolls, that has been wrought ad unguem. 

"I should say, therefore, do not hesitate to make the most thorough 
preparation, or to let it be known, if need be, that you do so. It is a 
good thing, too, to mix in something of humor, never coarse, but of a 
fine sort, giving flavor as a mite of red pepper flavors a salad. Helpful 
also is a touch of pathos or sentiment, of which, in a reasonable degree, 
do not be afraid. Without humor or sentiment no speech goes very 
close to the heart of an audience. I have often found that some little 
incident, scene, reminiscence, or bit of landscape has given a source 
from which to derive a speech. Sitting down to write it, the theme 
expands, not forward, but in a circle. Some leading thought controls, 
and around that argument, illustration, application group themselves. 
The very process of writing, especially a second copying, will develop 
new trains of thought and illustration of reference. A word as you 
write it becomes a suggestion, and your pen creates almost as if it were 
independent of your mind. A vocabulary is, of course, a vital resource 
for a speaker, though some seem to have been born to a full one. The 
great aid to this is reading and also committing good authors, a disci- 
pline doubly valuable because it furnishes a stock of facts and a stock 
of words. 

" I think the great thing in a speech is earnestness of purpose, and 
especially of delivery. I would not advise the slightest attention to 
gesticulation, for that will take care of itself with an earnest speaker, 
and some of the most earnest and effective seem to dispense with it 
altogether. The manner is everything in public speaking. 

"A good speech consists of a sound, wholesome array of facts, 
thought, or argument, relieved in the treatment by a picture, a touch of 
humor, or a play of fancy or sentiment ; not afraid of the embellishment 
of a reasonable fringe of rhetorical flourish, clearly enunciated in the 
speaking, and delivered with all the force, feeling, and approval that 
you would put into a struggle for your life." 

From the Hon. George William Curtis. 

11 Dear Sir: — You give me a very difficult theme, but I am sure, 
at least, that, as oratory is an art, the manner of speaking is, for the 
purposes of art, no less, important than the matter. If a man has some- 
thing to say, it is in vain, for instance, if he cannot be heard. It is 
equally in vain if his audience will not listen. Is not this, then, the 



126 READING AND SPEAKING. 

beginning of oratory, to make yourself heard and to make your hearer 
wish to hear ? 

"As in every art, there are in oratory certain natural advantages 
which are of great service, but which many great orators have not 
possessed, such as a pleasant presence, a musical and flexible voice, a 
graceful carriage. An orator, undoubtedly, must have first of all what 
I should call the oratorical instinct. It is hard to define it, but it in- 
cludes the sense of an audience. This in exte?7ipore debate will give 
him direct and incisive speech, keep him to the point, supply him with 
happy illustration and argument adapted to the audience and the 
occasion. Mr. Beecher once told me that in lecturing he had been 
sometimes obliged to discard the manuscript which had generally served 
him satisfactorily, and trust to the moment and the fullness of his mind 
to touch that particular audience. 

"This sense of the audience will enable an orator in preparing an 
elaborate address to conceive it as a speech to be heard, not as an 
essay to be read. A manuscript or some convenient form of notes will 
then be no impediment in delivery. I think that Dumont says that 
Mirabeau spoke from notes, and so, I think, did Dr. Chalmers. The 
young orator must not be afraid to take the same pains with the form 
of his oration, which is largely the oration, that the painter takes with 
his color, his drawing, his aerial perspective, and his chiaroscuro ; and 
the poet with his rhythm and his words. Care and taste, the felicitous 
choice of phrase and happy cadence, do not result in disagreeable arti- 
ficiality in an oration more than in a poem or picture. 

" Some speakers may carefully construct the general scheme of an 
address, and then trust to the moment to supply the words and the 
form; but others can neither do it nor learn to do it. John Bright 
told a friend, from whom I have it, that he generally wrote out the 
more essential parts and the conclusion of an important speech. Web- 
ster wrote and committed his orations at Plymouth and Bunker Hill, 
and the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. Everett wrote his orations 
and, as he said, impressed them simultaneously on the paper and on 
his memory. Wendell Phillips's last oration at Harvard, on the Cen- 
tenary of the Phi Beta Kappa,- was in type when he spoke it. Lincoln's 
address at Gettysburg was read by him from manuscript. The greatest 
orations have been probably most thoughtfully prepared. The brightest 
and most effective after-dinner speeches have been probably most care- 
fully considered. But this does not prevent a quick and fortunate use 
of unforeseen incidents and the remarks of others. 



SUGGESTIONS BY EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS. 1 27 

"Peter Harvey says that Mr. Webster said to him that 'no man 
who was not inspired could make a good speech without preparation ; 
that if there were any of that sort of people he had never met them. 1 
He added that his reply to Hayne, the most famous of his speeches, 
was based upon full notes that he had made for another speech upon 
the same general subject. ' If he had tried to make a speech to fit my 
notes, he could not have hit it better. No man is inspired by the 
occasion ; I never was.' Again he said, ' The materials of that speech 
had been lying in my mind for eighteen months, though I had never 
committed my thoughts to paper, or arranged them in my memory.' 
As for speaking ' on the spur of the moment,' Mr. Webster said, 
' Young man, there is no such thing as extemporaneous acquisition.' 
Yet Mr. Everett says that Webster made eleven speeches on his trip at 
the opening of the Erie railroad, and could not have known, when he 
stepped out of the car to speak, what he was going to say. But every 
one of them, Mr. Everett said, would have added greatly to the reputa- 
tion of any other man in the United States. I heard many of those 
speeches, for I went upon the occasion as a correspondent of the New 
York T7'ibu7ie, but I recall them only as such speeches as any man 
accustomed to public speaking, and knowing that he would be called 
upon to speak at certain points of the journey, would naturally make. 
They were not comparable to Mr. Seward's series of speeches in the 
Lincoln election campaign of i860, which are only less remarkable than 
Lincoln's own speeches in his popular debate with Douglas in 1858. 

" In speaking, a young orator should be sure that those farthest from 
him hear easily. He must, therefore, articulate deliberately and dis- 
tinctly, and in what is called his natural voice. He should avoid a 
declamatory and artificial tone, such as is not unusual with clergymen. 
Nothing is easier than to acquire tricks of speech and manner, and he 
should be on constant guard against them as against favorite words 
or phrases in composition. Indeed, the best advice which an older 
speaker can give to a younger is mainly negative. It consists chiefly 
in the exhortation not to acquire bad habits of tone, of position, of 
carriage, of gesture. No man, as I have said, can be an orator who 
has not the oratorical instinct. If, having that, he studies elocution, 
he must beware of artificiality. I suppose none of our great orators, 
for instance, Patrick Henry, Webster, Clay, Wendell Phillips, Beecher, 
(except, perhaps, Edward Everett) made oratory a study in any other 
way than by constant and shrewd observation. Conscious rules they 
probably had none. Their school was practice; but they brought to 



128 READING AND SPEAKING. 



the school great natural aptitude, and they did not trust the ■ spur of 
the moment,' but relied upon thought and knowledge, and careful culti- 
vation of the forms of expression. 

"I am afraid that what I say will be of little service to you. But I 
should most gladly aid any young man in his effort to train himself in 
this most ancient and noble art. 

" Very truly yours, 

"GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS." 

Mr. Curtis's reference to the lack of oratorical training 
of great orators brings to my recollection a paragraph by- 
one of them, — Henry Ward Beecher, — which, while at 
first glance an apparent denial of Mr. Curtis's statement, 
is simply the same thought put into a little different form. 

" But it is said, ' our greatest orators have not been trained.' How 
do you know ? It may be that Patrick Henry went crying in the 
wilderness of poor speakers, without any great training. I will admit 
that now and then there are gifts so eminent and so impetuous that 
they break through ordinary necessities ; but even Patrick Henry was 
eloquent only under great pressure ; and there remain the results of 
only one or two of his efforts. Daniel Webster is supposed, in many 
respects, to have been the greatest American orator of his time ; but 
there never lived a man who was so studious of everything he did, 
even to the buttons on his coat, as Daniel Webster. Henry Clay was 
prominent as an orator ; but though he was not a man of the schools, 
he was a man who schooled himself; and, by his own thought and 
taste, and sense of that which was fitting and beautiful, he became 
through culture an accomplished orator." 

I trust I shall not seem discourteous to Mr. Curtis, to 
whom I am indebted for many favors, and to whom the 
whole country is indebted in very many ways, if by another 
quotation from Mr. Beecher I show that he, at least, had 
had special training. In one of his " Lectures on Preach- 
ing," before the students of Yale Theological Seminary, 
he said : — 






SUGGESTIONS BY EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS. 1 29 

"It was my good fortune, in early academical life, to fall into the 
hands of your estimable fellow-citizen, Professor Lovell, and for a 
period of three years I was drilled incessantly in posturing, gesture, 
and voice-culture. His manner, however, he did not communicate to 
me. And manner is a thing which, let me here remark, should never 
be communicated or imitated, It was the skill of that gentleman that 
he never left a manner with anybody. He simply gave his pupils the 
knowledge of what they had in themselves. Afterward, when going to 
the seminary, I carried the method of his instructions with me, as 
did others. We practiced a great deal on ' Dr. Barber's System, 1 
which was then in vogue, and particularly in developing the voice in 
its lower register, and also upon the explosive tones. I found it to be 
a very manifest benefit, and one that has remained with me all my life 
long. The drill that I underwent produced, not a rhetorical manner, 
but a flexible instrument that accommodated itself readily to every 
kind of thought, and every shade of feeling, and obeyed the inward 
will in the outward realization of the results of rules and regulations." 

I am sure that I cannot more fittingly bring this subject 
to a close than with the good words of one of the wisest 
teachers of the art of public speaking this country has 
ever known, — Dr. Anson J. Upson. 

" Though a man may understand perfectly all that can be done by 
rhetorical art ; though he be judicious in selecting his theme, and skill- 
ful in its development ; though he may have been trained so that by 
the ever-varying music of his voice, and the force and grace of his 
gesture, he can, with precision and power, express every phase of 
thought and feeling, and thus double the impression of the spoken 
word ; yet under all must be that virtue which is at the foundation of 
all Christian living ; under all must be self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice, 
or his labor will have been in vain." 



READING AND SPEAKING. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

DECLAMATIONS. 

We'll have a speech straight. Hamlet. 

I pray thee, speak in sober judgment. 

Much Ado about Nothing. 
It is not enough to speak, but to speak true. 

Midsummer-Night 's Dream. 

I add a few brief declamations for class-room and general practice. 
They will give good opportunity to apply the foregoing rules and 
suggestions. 

THE REPRESENTATIVE ORATOR. 

From the earliest age of the world, peculiar honor and 
power have been the reward of the successful orator. He 
is a factor not to be omitted in computing the causes of 
human action. No fame is so resplendent, no power so 
alluring as his. His fame extends from where the story- 
teller of the East recites in raptured ears his matchless 
tales, to where in stiff and stately dignity the British 
House of Lords sits hedged about by ancient usages. No 
one sweeps every chord of human passion as does he. He 
revives the sinking spirit, puts hope into the hopeless, 
gives determination to the undecided, and firmness to the 
wavering. 

No graceful language, no splendid declamation alone, 
can earn for one the title of representative orator. He 
must come speaking from soul to soul. He must be 
charged with ideas. He need not be a profound thinker ; 



DECLAMATIONS. 131 

he need add nothing to literature ; but he must be a 
true man ; he must add something to history. He must 
be thoroughly imbued with the principles and sentiments 
of his age and people. He must be a man of large 
brain and large heart, of broad views and generous im- 
pulses. He must have inflexible courage, for it is often 
his to be a John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. He 
must often breast the current of popular disapprobation, 
borne up by a principle, assured that he will at last 
triumph. 

In him oratory rises to the full grandeur of its mission. 
It faces Philip with Demosthenes ; it sends the flower of a 
continent through unknown, untried dangers with Peter 
the Hermit ; it tears down thrones with Mirabeau ; it 
sounds freedom's trumpet-call with Henry. Hampden 
hurling defiance at England, O'Connell speaking for down- 
trodden Ireland, Phillips for the slave, these are represent- 
ative orators. John W. O'Brien. 



HAMLETS ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS. 

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to 
you, trippingly on the tongue ; but if you mouth it, as 
many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke 
my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your 
hand, thus, but use all gently ; for in the very torrent, 
tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you 
must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it 
smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a 
robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, 
to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for 
the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable 
dumb-shows and noise. I could have such a fellow 



132 READING AND SPEAKING. 

whipped for o'erdoing Termagant ; it out-herods Herod : 
pray you, avoid it. 

Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion 
be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to 
the action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep 
not the modesty of nature ; for anything so overdone is 
from the purpose of playing ; whose end, both at the first 
and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to 
nature : to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own 
image, and the very age and body of the time his form 
and pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, 
though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the 
judicious grieve ; the censure of the which one must, in your 
allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there 
be players that I have seen play, and heard others 
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, 
neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of 
Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed 
that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had 
made men, and not made them well, they imitated human- 
ity so abominably. 



LINCOLN'S FAMOUS GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in lib- 
erty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great civil war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived 
and so dedicated, can long endure. 

We are met on a battlefield of that war; we have come 
to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for 
those who here crave their lives that that nation mi°;ht live. 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 33 

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot conse- 
crate, we cannot hallow this ground : the brave men, living 
and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far be- 
yond our poor power to add or detract. The world will 
little note nor long remember what we say here ; but it 
can never forget what they did here. 

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the 
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far 
so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us : that from these hon- 
ored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which 
they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we here 
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; 
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- 
dom ; and that government of the people, by the people, 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 



FROM LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 

On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, 
all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil 
war. All dreaded it ; all sought to avoid it. Neither 
party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration 
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that 
the cause might cease with, or even before, the conflict 
itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, 
and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both 
read the same Bible and prayed to the same God ; and 
each invoked his aid against the other. It may seem 
strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's 
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other 



134 READING AND SPEAKING. 

men's faces ; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. 
The prayers of both could not be answered : that of neither 
has been fully answered. The Almighty has his own 
purpose. 

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if 
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil 
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash 
shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said 
three thousand years ago, so still must it be said, that " the 
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

With malice towards none ; with charity for all ; with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the 
nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne 
the battle, and for his widow and orphan ; — to do all 
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves and with all nations. 



THE PILGRIMS. 



From the dark portals of the Star Chamber and in the 
stern text of the Acts of Uniformity the Pilgrims received 
a commission more important than any that ever bore the 
royal seal. Their banishment to Holland was fortunate ; 
the decline of their little company in the strange land was 
fortunate ; the difficulties which they experienced in get- 
ting the royal consent to banish themselves to this wilder- 
ness were fortunate ; all the tears and heart-breakings of 
that ever-memorable parting at Delfshaven had the happi- 
est influence on the rising destinies of New England. 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 35 

These rough touches of fortune brushed off the light, un- 
certain, selfish spirits ; they made it a grave, solemn, self- 
denying expedition. They cast a broad shadow of thought 
and seriousness over the cause ; and if this sometimes 
deepened into severity and bitterness, can we find no 
apology for such a human weakness ? 

Their trials of wandering and exile, of the ocean, the 
winter, the wilderness, and the savage foe, were the final 
assurance of success. They kept far away from the enter- 
prise all patrician softness, all hereditary claims to pre-emi- 
nence. No effeminate nobility crowded into the dark and 
austere ranks of the Pilgrims ; no Carr nor Villiers desired 
to lead on the ill-provided band of despised Puritans ; no 
well-endowed clergy were anxious to quit their cathedrals 
and set up a pompous hierarchy in the frozen wilderness ; 
no craving governors were on the alert to be sent over to 
our cheerless El Dorados of ice and of snow : no ; they 
could not say they had encouraged, patronized, or helped 
the Pilgrims ; they could not afterwards fairly pretend to 
reap where they had not strown. And as our fathers 
reared this broad and solid fabric unaided, barely tolerated, 
it did not fall when the favor, which had always been with- 
holden, was changed into wrath ; when the arm, which had 
never supported, was raised to destroy. 

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any 
principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of 
this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military 
science, in how many months were they all swept off by 
the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the early limits 
of New England ? Tell me, politician, how long did this 
shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties 
had not smiled, languish on the distant coast ? Student of 
history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted 



I36 READING AND SPEAKING. 

settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and 
find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beat- 
ing upon the houseless heads of women and children ? was 
it disease ? was it the tomahawk ? was it the deep malady 
of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart 
aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved 
and left beyond the sea ? — was it some or all of these united 
that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy 
fate ? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that 
not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope ? Is 
it possible that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so 
worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has 
gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, 
a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so 
glorious ? Edward Everett. 



THE EXPLOITS OF THE PILGRIMS. 

It is by no pompous epithets or lively antitheses that 
the exploits of the Pilgrims are to be set forth by their 
children. We can only do this worthily by repeating the 
plain tale of their sufferings ; by dwelling on the circum- 
stances under which this memorable enterprise was exe- 
cuted ; and by catching that spirit which led them across 
the ocean. 

There seems to be this peculiarity in the nature of 
their enterprise, that its grand and beneficent consequences 
are, with the lapse of time, constantly unfolding them- 
selves, in an extent and to a magnitude beyond the reach 
of the most sanguine promise. Did they propose to them- 
selves a refuge beyond the sea from the religious and 
political tyranny of Europe ? They achieved not that 



DECLAMATIONS. I37 

alone, but they have opened a wide asylum to all the vic- 
tims of oppression throughout the world. Did they look 
for a retired spot, where the little church of Leyden might 
enjoy the freedom of conscience ? Behold the mighty 
regions over which in peaceful conquests they have borne 
the banners of the cross ! Did they seek to prosecute a 
frugal commerce, in reimbursement of the expenses of 
their humble establishment ? The fleets and navies of 
their descendants are on the farthest ocean ; and the 
wealth of the Indies is now wafted, with every tide, to the 
coasts where, with hook and line, they painfully gathered 
up their frugal earnings. In short, did they, in their 
brightest and most sanguine moments, contemplate a 
thrifty, loyal, and prosperous colony, portioned off like a 
younger son of the imperial household to a humble and 
dutiful distance ? Behold the spectacle of an independent 
and powerful republic founded on these shores ! 

And shall we stop here ? Is the tale now told ? Is 
the contrast now complete ? Are our destinies all ful- 
filled ? My friends, we are in the very morning of our 
days ; our numbers are but a unit ; our national resources 
but a pittance ; our hopeful achievements in the political, 
the social, and the intellectual nature are but the rudi- 
ments of what the children of the Pilgrims must yet attain. 
He who, two centuries hence, shall look back on our pres- 
ent condition, will sketch a contrast far more astonishing ; 
and will speak of our times as the day of small things, in 
stronger and juster language than any in which we can 
depict the poverty and want of our fathers. 

Edward Everett. 



I38 READING AND SPEAKING. 



CONSERVATISM. 






Speaking of conservatism, George William Curtis once 
said : — 

" A friend of mine was a student of Couture the painter 
in Paris. One day the master came and looked over the 
pupil's drawing and said to him, ' My friend, that line 
should go so ; ' and indicated it lightly on the paper with 
his pencil. To prove the accuracy of the master's eye, 
the pupil rubbed out the correction and left the line. The 
next day Couture came, and looking over the drawing, 
stopped in surprise. ' That's curious,' said he; 'I thought 
I altered that. This line goes so/ he added, and drew it 
firmly with black upon the paper. Again the pupil rubbed 
out the correction. The next day the master came again, 
stopped short when he saw the drawing, looked at it a 
moment without speaking ; then, with his thumb-nail, he 
cut quite through the paper. ' That's the way this line 
ought to go,' he said, and passed on. 

" So the hearts and minds of our fathers marked the 
line of our true development. Conservatism rubbed it 
out. The Missouri struggle emphasized the line again. 
Conservatism rubbed it out. The tragedy of Kansas 
drew the line more sternly. Conservatism rubbed it out. 
Then, at last, the Divine finger drew in fire and blood, 
sharply, sharply, through our wailing homes, through our 
torn and bleeding country, through our very quivering 
hearts, the line of liberty, and justice, and equal rights ; 
and Conservatism might as well try to rub out the rainbow 
from the heavens, as to erase this, the decision of the 
age." 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 39 

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 

I have selected this extract from the famous lecture of Wendell 
Phillips, not for public speaking (it has been worn threadbare in that 
sort of service), but for class exercise. It is in Phillips's best style, 
and, as an illustration of that style, unsurpassed. 

If I stood here to-night to tell the story of Napoleon, I 
should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no 
language rich enough to paint the great General of the 
century. If I were to tell you the story of Washington, I 
should take it from your hearts, you, who think no marble 
white enough in which to carve the name of the Father 
of his Country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, 
Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has left hardly one written 
line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his 
enemies ; men who despised him because he was a negro 
and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in 
battle. 

You remember Macaulay says, comparing Cromwell 
with Napoleon, that Cromwell showed the greater military 
genius, if we consider that he never saw an army until he 
was forty ; while Napoleon was educated from a boy in the 
best military schools in Europe. Cromwell manufactured 
his own army ; Napoleon at the age of twenty-seven was 
placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. 
They were both successful ; but, says Macaulay, with such 
disadvantages, the Englishman showed the greater genius. 
Whether you allow the inference or not, you will at least 
grant that it is a fair mode of measurement. 

Apply it to Toussaint. Cromwell never saw an army 
till he was forty ; this man never saw a soldier till he was 
fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army, — out of 
what ? Englishmen, — the best blood in Europe ; and 



140 READING AND SPEAKING. 

with it he conquered, — what ? Englishmen, — their equals. 
This man manufactured his army out of what ? Out of 
what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, de- 
moralized by two hundred years of slavery. Yet out of 
this mixed, and, as you say, despicable mass, he forged a 
thunderbolt, and hurled it — at what ? At the proudest 
blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home con- 
quered ; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, 
and put them under his feet ; at the pluckiest blood in 
Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. 
Now if Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a 
soldier. 

Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back 
with me to the commencement of the century, and select 
what statesman you please. Let him be either American 
or European ; let him have a brain the result of six gen- 
erations of culture ; let him have the ripest training of 
university routine ; let him add to it the better education 
of practical life ; crown his temples with the silver of sev- 
enty years ; and show me the man of Saxon lineage for 
whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel rich 
as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro. 

I would call him Napoleon ; but Napoleon made his 
way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of 
blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him 
Cromwell ; but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state 
he founded went down with him into his grave. I would 
call him Washington ; but the great Virginian held slaves. 

You think me a fanatic to-night, for you read history, 
not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty 
years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of His- 
tory will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, 
Hamden for England, Fayette for France, choose Wash- 






DECLAMATIONS. I4I 

ington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier 
civilization ; then dipping her pen in the sunlight, will 
write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the 
soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture. 



TRUTH IN RHETORIC. 

An American writer, while painting a vivid picture of 
the state of society in ancient Rome, gives an electrical 
emphasis to his statement that everywhere throughout the 
empire, in the progress of decline, "rhetoric supplanted 
truth' 1 But how could this be ? What antagonism is pos- 
sible between rhetoric and truth, so that one can supplant 
the other. Rhetoric is truth, and truth is rhetoric : truth 
combined with the imagination ; truth moist with emotion ; 
truth directed to the accomplishment of a purpose ; and 
none the less true because so combined and directed. 

There can be no poetry apart from truth ; for the ideal 
is the highest, truest real. Neither can there be any 
rhetoric apart from truth ; for the true is one of its essen- 
tial elements. Because in a production accordant with 
rhetorical rules, results of the reasoning only are given, 
and not the reasoning process itself, truth is none the less 
there. Because conclusions only are stated, and not the 
premises by which those conclusions are reached, the truth 
is none the less there. In its national emblem, its harp, 
its lilies, its thistle, its lion, its eagle, a whole nation sees 
the truth of a proposition expressing the national charac- 
ter, the national hope, the national power ; and this is the 
glory of that emblazonry. And the proposition is none 
the less true to every mind, because in the national em- 
blem it is vivid to the imagination of every eye. 



142 READING AND SPEAKING. 

So, many a proposition may be conveyed into our 
minds through the feelings of our hearts, as well as 
through the logic of our heads, or the perceptions of our 
eyes ; and it is none the less true for that. A thought 
may be so transfused, flooded all over with passion, that 
not only are we mentally convinced of its truth, but our 
hearts respond, sometimes so warmly that every fibre 
thrills with emotion. This does not make that truth false, 
but all the more true. The words may suggest to our ear 
but the tap of a drum, or a single strain of a song we've 
heard at home ; in the words we may see only the wave of 
a flag, or the glance of an eye, or the flight of a bird that 
used to build its nest in the old orchard where we played 
when we were boys ; if our hearts respond to what we see 
and hear, if we feel its meaning, so that every man of us 
is conscious of a quiver, is it any the less true because 
pulses beat quicker, and moistened eyes flash brighter ? 

And yet how many will insist that we are descending 
from the heights of truth into the contradictions of false- 
hood, when we affirm, "that is rhetoric." Rhetoric every- 
where is all of logic, and much more. It is logic vivified, 
brightening, enlightening : logic on fire, melting : logic 
suffused, tenderly moving : logic passionate, exalting. 
Rhetoric is not falsehood, poetic or passionate ; it is sys- 
tematized truth, combined with imagination and feeling, 

for the accomplishment of a purpose. 

Anson J. Upson. 



DECLAMATIONS. I43 

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

Paragraphs from an imagined speech of John Adams, written by 
Daniel Webster in his Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. 

The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and 
blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obsti- 
nately persisted, till independence is within our grasp. 
We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why 
then, should we defer the Declaration of Independence ? 
That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character 
abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which they 
never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, 
in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that Eng- 
land herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the 
footing of independence, than consent, by repealing her 
acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct towards us 
has been a course of injustice and oppression. Why then, 
why then, sir, do we not as soon as possible change this 
from a civil to a national war ? And since we must fight 
it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all 
the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory ?. 

If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not 
fail. The cause will raise up armies ; the cause will create 
navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, 
will carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously through 
this struggle. Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people 
with increased courage. Read this Declaration at the head 
of the army ; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, 
and the solemn vow uttered to maintain it or perish on the 
bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit ; religion will 
approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round 
it, resolved to stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the 



144 READING AND SPEAKING. 

public halls ; proclaim it there ; let them hear it who heard 
the first roar of the enemy's cannon ; let them see it who 
saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bun- 
ker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and 
the very walls will cry out in its support. 

Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I 
see, I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, 
indeed, may rue it ; we may not live to the time when this 
Declaration shall be made good. We may die ; die colo- 
nists ; die slaves ; die, it may be, ignominiously and on 
the scaffold. Be it so ; be it so. But whatever may be 
our fate, be assured that this Declaration will stand. It 
may cost treasure, it may cost blood, but it will stand. 
Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the bright- 
ness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make 
this a glorious and immortal day. When we are in our 
graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it 
with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illumi- 
nations. 

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judg- 
ment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. 
All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in 
this life, I am ready here to stake upon it ; and I leave off 
as I begun, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the 
Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the bless- 
ing of God it shall be my dying sentiment : Independence 
now, and Independence forever ! 



DECLAMATIONS. 145 

FREE SPEECH. 

Free speech is not merely a spark from an eloquent 
orator's glowing tongue, even though his utterance has 
power to kindle men's passions or melt their hearts. Free 
speech is an eloquence above eloquence. It is an oratory 
of its own, and not every orator is its apostle. 

For many years a Carmelite monk touched the souls of 
men with the consolation of faith ; and Paris, listening, 
said : "This is eloquence." Then in that trial hour of his 
history, this same preacher, against the impending and 
dread anathema of Rome, exclaimed : " I will not enter the 
pulpit in chains;" and the world said: " Hark ! this is 
more than eloquence — it is Free Speech." Yes, eloquence 
is one thing and free speech is another. Open Macaulay's 
history. Lord Halifax was the chief silver-tongue among 
a whole generation of English statesmen ; but though he 
woke the ringing echoes of many a parliament, and though 
wherever he went he carried a full mouth of fine English, 
yet never, in all his public career, did he utter as much 
free speech as John Hampden let loose in a single sen- 
tence, when he said : " I will not pay twenty-one shillings 
and sixpence ship money." 

Edward Everett leaves many speeches ; Patrick Henry 
few. But the great word-painter, who busied himself with 
painting the white lily of Washington's fame, never caught 
that greater language of free speech that burned upon the 
tongue of him who knew how to say : " Give me Liberty 
or give me Death." 

Free speech is like the angel that delivered Saint Peter 
from prison. Its mission is to rescue from captivity some 
divinely inspired truth or principle, which unjust men have 
locked in dungeons or bound in chains. For thirty years 



I46 READING AND SPEAKING. 

the free speech of this country was consecrated to one 
sublime idea : an idea graven on the bell of Independence, 
which says : " Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all 
the inhabitants thereof." After thirty years' debate on 
human liberty, this idea is like Ophelia's rosemary : it is 
for remembrance ; and it calls to mind the champions of 
free speech in New England. They are the choice master 
spirits of the age. Some of them have been hissed ; others 
hailed ; all shall be revered. As the legend runs, Saint 
Hubert died and was buried. A green branch lying on 
his breast was buried with him ; and when, at the end of a 
hundred years, his grave was opened, the good man's body 
had dissolved into dust ; but the fair branch had kept its 
perennial green. So the advocates of free speech shall die 
and be buried, and their laurels be buried with them. 
But when the next generation, wise, just, and impartial, 
shall make inquiry for the heroes, the prophets, and princely 
souls of this present age, long after their bones are ashes 
their laurels shall abide in imperishable green. 

Theodore Tilton. 



MASSACHUSETTS. 



Let me recur to pleasing recollections ; let me indulge 
in refreshing remembrances of the past ; let me remind 
you that in early times no States cherished greater har- 
mony, both of principle and of feeling, than Massachusetts 
and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might 
again return. Shoulder to shoulder they went through 
the Revolution ; hand in hand they stood round the admin- 
istration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean 
on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation 



DECLAMATIONS. 147 

and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of 
false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of 
which that same great arm never scattered. 

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. She 
needs none. There she is. Behold her and judge for 
yourselves. There is her history. The world knows it by 
heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, 
and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker's Hill ; and 
there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, 
fallen in the great struggle for independence, now lie 
mingled with the soil of every State, from New England 
to Georgia ; and there they will lie forever. 

And where American liberty raised its first voice, and 
where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still 
lives in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original 
spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it ; if party 
strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it ; if folly 
and madness, if uneasiness, under salutary and necessary 
restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that Union by 
which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the 
end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was 
rocked ; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor 
it may still retain, over the friends who gather round 
it ; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the 
proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot 
of its origin. DAXIEL Webster< 



THE EXAMPLE OF THE FATHERS. 

We stand to-day on a great battle-field, in honor of the 
patriotism and valor of those who fought upon it. It is 
the step which they made in the world's history we would 



I48 READING AND SPEAKING. 

seek to commemorate ; it is the example which they have 
offered us we would seek to imitate. The wise and 
thoughtful men who directed this controversy knew well 
that it is by the wars that personal ambition has stimulated, 
by the armies whose force has been wielded alike for 
domestic oppression or foreign conquest, that the sway of 
despots has been so widely maintained. They had no love 
for war or any of its works, but they were more ready to 
meet its dangers in their attachment to the cause of civil 
and religious liberty. They desired to found no Roman 
republic, " whose banners, fanned by conquest's crimson 
wing," should float victorious over prostrate nations ; but 
one where the serene beauty of the arts of peace should 
put to shame the strifes that have impoverished peoples 
and degraded nations. To-day let us rejoice in the liberty 
which they have gained for us ; but let no utterances but 
those of peace salute our ears — no thoughts but those of 
peace animate our hearts. 

Above the plains of Marathon, even now, as the Grecian 
shepherd watches over his flocks, he fancies that the skies 
sometimes are filled with lurid light, and that in the clouds 
above are re-enacted the scenes of that great day when, on 
the field below, Greece maintained her freedom against the 
hordes which had assailed her. Again seem to come in 
long array, rich with "barbaric pearl and gold," the tur- 
baned ranks of the Persian host, and the air is filled with 
the clang of sword and shield, as again the fiery Greek 
seems to throw himself upon and drive before him his 
foreign invader ; shadows though they all are, that flit in 
wild, confused masses along the spectral sky. 

Above the field where we stand, even in the wildest 
dream may no such scenes offend the calmness of the 
upper air ; but may the stars look forever down upon pros- 



DECLAMATIONS. I49 

perity and peace ; upon the bay studded with its white- 
winged ships ; upon the populous and far-extending city, 
with its marts of commerce, its palaces of industry, its 
temples where each man may worship according to his own 
conscience ; and, as the continent shall pass beneath their 
steady rays, may the millions of happy homes attest a land 
where the benign influence of free government has brought 
happiness and contentment, where labor is rewarded, where 
manhood is honored, and where virtue and religion are 

revered. 

Charles Devens, Jr. 



A PLEA FOR IRELAND. 

The sons of Ireland have sworn to be free. The men of 
Ireland have said : " Long enough have we watched and 
waited and trusted. Long enough have we been cajoled, 
derided, and deceived. It is time for us to act !" These 
were not words tossed to the eddies of the wind. They 
were in terrible earnest. Silent, straightforward, swift, the 
cause progressed. Sincere, resolute, and undismayed, with 
their hearts in their work and their reliance upon God, 
they created a mighty force. It is now ready to act. 
Already over the hoarse, surging sea, comes to our ears 
the sweet voice of Liberty, girding up her loins to battle 
with the oppressor. Already in the eastern horizon flashes 
the sunburnt banner of Erin, upheld by the strong arms of 
patriotism, and borne to success by the resistless audacity 
of outraged and desperate men. Everything is staked 
upon the result : life, honor, manhood, freedom. 

Will you witness the struggle between liberty and 
despotism, and tender no encouragement to the oppressed ? 



150 READING AND SPEAKING. 

Will you see the desperate effort to throw off the insult of 
centuries, and sit impassive and look upon it with alien 
eyes ? Can you Americans look with apathy upon a people 
whom ruin and dishonor stare in the face, a people bowed 
down by the heartless tyranny of centuries, a people mad- 
dened by the horrors of inexpressible thraldom ? Can you 
see this people stretching out their manacled hands to you 
and asking you in the name of God and humanity to aid 
them, and turn a deaf ear to their supplications and a cold 
denial to their prayers ? Oh, remember as you are free- 
men, how you value that freedom, and aid this people to 
obtain theirs ! Remember as you are Americans that it is 
your privilege and pride to assist in raising to the same 
glorious position with yourselves, all enthralled, enslaved 
nations ! Remember as you are Christians that your duty 
is to help the weak and oppressed against the might of 
injustice ! 

To whom can they look if you desert them ? And have 
you reason to love Ireland's oppressors ? Have you for- 
gotten her insults, her taunts, her joy at your disaster, her 
grief at your success ? Have you forgotten the aid she 
gave your enemies by land and by sea? On the other 
hand, where can you look and not find instances of Irish- 
men giving, with their labor and their lives, proof of their 
love for liberty, and the land that gave them birth, and the 
land that gave them shelter in exile ? What American 
battle-field can you find that is not soaked with Irish blood 
and sanctified by Irish valor ? We appeal to you in the 
name of a distressed and crushed people to lend your help 
in rescuing them from thraldom. We appeal to you in the 
sacred name of Liberty, of which you are the chosen 
people, to reach out your hand to aid a nation struggling 
to be free. 



DECLAMATIONS. I 5 I 

THE SLAVE OF BOSTON. 

On the 24th of May, 1854, the city was calm and still. 
A poor black man was at work with one of his own nation 
earning an honest livelihood. A Judge of Probate, Boston 
born and Boston bred, a man in easy circumstances, a pro- 
fessor in Harvard College, was sitting in his office, and 
with a single stroke of his pen dashed off the liberty of a 
man, a citizen of Massachusetts. He leaves the writ with 
the marshal, goes home to his family, caresses his children, 
and enjoys his cigar. The frivolous smoke curls round 
his frivolous head ; he lies down to sleep and dreams such 
dreams as haunt such heads. But when he awakes next 
morn, all the winds of indignation, wrath, and honest scorn 
are loosed. Before night they are blowing all over the 
commonwealth, and before another night they have gone 
to the Mississippi, and wherever the lightning messenger 
can tell the tale. 

So I have read in an old mediaeval legend, that one 
summer afternoon there came up all hot from Tartarus a 
shape garmented and garbed to represent a man. He 
walked quiet and decorous through Milan's stately streets 
and scattered an invisible dust. It lay along the street ; 
it touched the walls ; it ascended to the cross on the min- 
ster's utmost top ; it went down to the beggar's den. 
Peacefully he walked through the streets, vanished, and 
went home. But the next morning the pestilence was in 
Milan, and ere a week had sped, half the population were 
in their graves, and half the other half, crying that hell 
was clutching at their throats, fled from the reeking city 
of the plague. 

I have studied the records of crime; I can understand 
how a man commits a crime of rage or passion, nay, of 



152 READING AND SPEAKING. 

ambition or revenge ; but for a man in Boston, with no 
rage or passion, no ambition or revenge, to steal a poor 
negro, this fact I cannot understand. When a man, bred 
in Boston, within sight of Faneuil Hall, with all its sacred 
memories ; within two hours of Plymouth Rock ; within a 
single hour of Concord and Lexington ; in sight of Bunker 
Hill — when he will commit such a crime, it seems to me 
there is no parallel in history. Come, Nero, thou awful 
Roman emperor; come, St. Dominic; come, Torquemada, 
fathers of the Inquisition, seek your equal here ! No, pass 
by — you are no companions for a man like this ! Come, 
shade of Jeffreys, thou judicial butcher! for two hundred 
years thy name has been pilloried in the face of the world, 
and thy memory gibbeted before mankind! Go, tell them 
there is a God ! aye, and a judgment, too, where a slave 
can appeal against him that made him slave, to Him that 
made him man ! Theodore Parker. 



APPEAL IN BEHALF OF GREECE. 

There is reason to apprehend that a tremendous storm 
is ready to burst upon our happy country — one which 
may call into action all our vigor, courage, and resources. 
Is it wise or prudent, then, in preparing to breast the 
storm, if it must come, to talk to this nation of its incom- 
petency to repel European aggression, to lower its spirit, 
to weaken its moral energy, and to qualify it for easy con- 
quest and base submission ? If there be any reality in the 
dangers which are supposed to encompass us, should we 
not animate the people, and adjure them to believe, as I 
do, that our resources are ample, and that we can bring 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 53 

into the field a million of freemen, ready to exhaust their 
last drop of blood, and to spend their last cent, in the de- 
fence of the country, its liberty and its institutions ? And 
has it come to this ? Are we so humble, so low, so de- 
based, that we dare not express our sympathy for suffering 
Greece ; that we dare not articulate our detestation of the 
brutal excesses of which she has been the bleeding victim, 
lest we might offend one or more of their imperial and 
royal majesties ? Are we so mean, so base, so despicable, 
that we may not attempt to express our horror, utter our 
indignation, at the most brutal and atrocious war that ever 
stained earth or shocked high heaven ; at the ferocious 
deeds of a savage and infuriated soldiery, stimulated and 
urged on by the clergy of a fanatical and inimical religion, 
and rioting in all the excesses of blood and butchery, at 
the mere details of which the heart sickens and recoils ? 

But it is not for Greece alone that I desire to see the 
measure adopted. It will give her but little support, and 
that purely of a moral kind. It is principally for America, 
for the credit and character of our common country, for 
our own unsullied name, that I hope to see it pass. What 
appearance on the page of history would a record like this 
exhibit ? " In the month of January, in the year of our 
Lord and Saviour, 1824, while all European Christendom 
beheld, with cold and unfeeling indifference, the unexam- 
pled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, 
a proposition was made in the Congress of the United 
States to send a messenger to Greece to inquire into her 
state and condition, with a kind expression of our good 
wishes and our sympathies — and it was rejected!" Go 
home, if you can, go home, if you dare, to your constit- 
uents, and tell them that you voted it down. Meet, if you 
can, the appalling countenance of those who sent you here, 



154 READING AND SPEAKING. 

and tell them that you shrunk from the declaration of your 
own sentiments ; that you can not tell how, but that some 
unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some 
indefinable danger drove you from your purpose ; that the 
spectres of scimitars, and crowns, and crescents gleamed 
before you and alarmed you ; and that you suppressed all 
the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by 
national independence, and by humanity. I cannot bring 
myself to believe that such will be the feelings of a major- 
ity of this committee. But, for myself, though every 
friend of the cause should desert it, and I be left to stand 
alone with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I will give 
to this resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified 

support. 

Henry Clay. 



TRUE FRIENDS OF THE UNION. 

Among these graves we would not recall one memory of 
bitterness and anger. With equal love for what was good 
in their common humanity, with equal forgiveness for what 
was evil, Nature folds alike the ashes of loyalist and rebel 
in her resurrection robes of spring-time flowers. Courage 
and honor alike require that we who, by God's providence, 
were victors in- the strife, should be freely and absolutely 
generous in peace. Courage and honor equally require 
that they who were beaten should yield manly submission 
to the decision of that final tribunal of the sword to which 
they appealed. 

Does any seek this day, for any cause, to revive the old 
prejudice of class and caste and race ? He is no friend of 
the Union. Does any seek this day, for self or partisan 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 55 

success, to set white against black or black against white ? 
He is no friend of the Union. The man who this day 
draws the color line in politics is either traitor, knave, or 
simpleton. His place is among the shadows and bats of 
the past, and not in the sunlight of the present. Does any 
seek to deny to loyal comers in any part of the South 
full citizenship, complete protection, and hearty welcome, 
because such comers wore the Federal blue in other days ? 
He is no friend of the Union. Does any seek to taunt 
loyal subjects of the law and keepers of the peace, because 
such wore the gray in days of battle ? He is no friend of 
the Union. 

Where so-called Conservatism has triumphed there have 
been too often practical intolerance, practical denial of 
personal liberty, practical denial of popular education, and 
persistent effort to revive old systems under new forms. 
Where so-called Radicalism has succeeded there have been 
too often official corruption and venality. One turns in 
sadness from such partisanship on either side, and asks for 
a patriotism of conscience, courage, and common sense, 
that will neither coerce the ballot of the citizen nor steal 
the revenue of the State ; that will deal with white and 
black alike in the great but rare wisdom of simple justice ; 
that will seek to perform each public trust with brave 
fidelity and intelligent honesty. 

Stewart L. Woodford. 



GERMAN UNITY. 






Have you ever read that poem of Arndt's, " What is the 
German's Fatherland ? " Arrogant French Diplomacy 
little knew the storm it was gathering to burst upon its 



156 READING AND SPEAKING. 






own head. It planned the disruption of a people, but 
inspired a song which bound it with cords the wildest mar- 
tial fury could not snap. How all their later history 
breathes and pulsates with this unity of race. How the 
word " Fatherland " is twined about the very tendrils of 
the German heart ! 

Why was Frederic called the " Hero of Rosbach " ? 
That was not a great victory. The well-regulated Prussian 
valor easily overcame a dunce of a general and his ill-dis- 
ciplined army. It has been honored and crowned because 
it made a day memorable as Agincourt or Bannockburn. 
Hitherto Germans had fought Germans. The defeat of 
one could not be called the honest pride of the other. 
Rosbach was the first field won from the Gallic race by 
a pure Teutonic army since the age of Charlemagne. It 
gave language to unuttered feelings, and distinctly pro- 
claimed the reality of a German nation. 

Another war drew the same character in a bolder hand. 
Six short weeks humbled the power of Austria and pointed 
the way to Prussian ascendency. No thrill of joy ran from 
the Baltic to the Alps. Stained and tattered banners hung 
in the churches of Berlin ; but they told only the story of 
one blood and one language. The power of a Bismarck 
had crushed forever the ambition of a Leopold ; but Ger- 
many kept an ominous silence, and only cast suspicious 
glances at the would-be autocrat of Europe. 

A handful of years and the scene has changed. A 
rumor floats on the heated air of a summer day that 
startles the quiet of a sleepy hamlet, and rises above the 
din of the busiest mart. It is the courier of war, telling 
with panting breath how Paris resounds with the cry of 
" On to Berlin," and how a French army is marching for 
the Rhine. The sluggish German blood quickens its flow, 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 57 

and the national heart throbs with a stronger life. Visions 
of desecrated homes and polluted altars rise unbidden, and 
the Fatherland is bulwarked by a million men. " Empire 
of the Air" no longer, Germany becomes the "Empire of 
the Land," and vows to guard forever the ancient freedom 
of the Rhine. Arthur s> Hoyt> 



MODERN KNIGHTS ERRANT. 

When Don Quixote started on his famous expedition, men 
fancied they saw dead Chivalry riding like another Cid to 
its own burial. But Chivalry did not die with the knight 
of La Mancha ; and Cervantes, aspiring to celebrate its 
death, has only marked the epoch of its survival. 

No type of mediaeval chivalry but has its counterpart in 
every age. Take that class of knights of which Godfrey 
stands as representative. His was a life consecrated to a 
single end. Hardships endured, disease welcomed, perils 
faced, that the Cross might triumph. Such a champion in 
our day was Sumner. Not a great statesman, but a man 
with a great ideal ; and Godfrey did not more devoutly fix 
his eyes upon the sepulchre of Christ, than did Sumner 
upon the emancipation of the slave. Through long years 
of defeat, against the opposition of friends and the persecu- 
tion of enemies, never swerving, but with the rights of the 
negro in his brain and heart, he swept right on to the end, 
a true Knight Errant in Freedom's Crusade. 

There is another class of Knights Errant, restless, fiery, 
of lofty faith and stainless honor ; men who fight to prove 
their arms ; who prize the conflict higher than the victory; 
who achieve great and worthy deeds for the sake of knightly 



158 READING AND SPEAKING. 

glory and prestige. This class, represented in another age 
by Bayard, has its perfect type in Garibaldi. The story of 
his life reads like the chronicles of Froissart, or the romance 
of a Troubadour. His career began when, from the cradle 
of Austrian despotism, Italy raised its infant wail. Then 
in Sardinia and France, in Tunis and Sicily, amid the 
passes of the Alps and away in another hemisphere, upon 
the banks of the Plata, drooping humanity caught the music 
of his voice, and felt the magic of his presence. Wherever 
he went, oppression shrunk back and liberty took hope. 
Beautiful in person, frugal in habits, brave in battle, he is 
the living embodiment of that spirit which centuries ago 
tilted at Camelot, and fought the Moors in Spain. 

Our age has many champions whose names are written 
in fadeless lines — Kossuth and O'Connell, Mazzini and 
Hugo, John Brown and Toussaint L'Ouverture — as proud 
a cavalcade as ever swept Castilian lists or rode to Pales- 
tine. Sleep on, Cervantes, in thy grave at La Trinidad. 
Chivalry is not dead. As long as men will struggle after 
ideals of beauty, honor, and truth, wherever they may be, 
so long will the graces of knighthood endure. 



THE MINUTE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION. 

The Minute Man of the Revolution ! And who was he ? 
He was the husband and father, who left the plough in the 
furrow, the hammer on the bench, and, kissing wife and 
children, marched to die or to be free ! He was the old, 
the middle-aged, the young. He was Captain Miles, of 
Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march ! 
He was Deacon Josiah Haines, of Sudbury, eighty years 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 59 

old, who marched with his company to South Bridge, at 
Concord, then joined in that hot pursuit to Lexington, and 
fell as gloriously as Warren at Bunker Hill. He was 
James Hayward, of Acton, twenty-two years old, foremost 
in that deadly race from Charlestown to Concord, who 
raised his piece at the same .moment with a British soldier, 
each exclaiming, "You are a dead man!" The Briton 
dropped, shot through the heart. Hayward fell, mortally 
wounded. 

"Father," said he, "I started with forty balls ; I have 
three left. I never did such a day's work before. Tell 
mother not to mourn too much ; and tell her whom I 
love more than my mother that I am not sorry I turned 
out." 

This was the Minute Man of the Revolution ! The 
rural citizen, trained in the common school, the town meet- 
ing, who carried a bayonet that thought, and whose gun, 
loaded with a principle, brought down, not a man, but a 
system. With brain and heart and conscience all alive, 
he opposed every hostile order of British counsel. The 
cold Grenville, the brilliant Townsend, the reckless Hills- 
borough derided, declaimed, denounced, laid unjust taxes, 
and sent troops to collect them ; and the plain Boston 
Puritan laid his finger on the vital point of the tremendous 
controversy, and held to it inexorably. Intrenched in his 
own honesty, the king's gold could not buy him ; enthroned 
in the love of his fellow-citizens, the king's writ could not 
take him ; and when, on the morning at Lexington, the 
king's troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw, 
beyond the clouds of the moment, the rising sun of the 
America we behold, and, careless of himself, mindful only 
of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, " Oh, what a glori- 
ous morning ! " He felt that a blow would soon be struck 



l6o READING AND SPEAKING. 



that would break the heart of British tyranny. His judg^ 
ment, his conscience, told him the hour had come. 

Do you remember, in that disastrous siege in India, 
when the little Scotch girl raised her head from her pallet 
in the hospital, and said to the sickening hearts of the 
English, "I hear the bagpipes; the Campbells are com- 
ing"? And they said, "No, Jessie; it is delirium." 
" No, I know it ; I heard it far off." And in an hour the 
pibroch burst upon their glad ears, and the banner of 
Saint George floated in triumph over their heads. And so, 
at Lexington Square, the Minute Man of the Revolution 
heard the first notes of the jubilee which, to-day, rises 
from the hearts and fills the minds of a free people. 

George William Curtis. 






A GOOD AND HONEST HEART. 

In the old castles that are scattered all over England, 
you are sure to find in one of the strongest towers a well 
of living water, deep and pure, and sure never to fail. It 
was the indispensable condition of a citadel of the first 
order. If no such well could be found in the heart of the 
hill, the castle was of small account ; the foe would come 
and camp about the walls, would prevent the defenders 
from reaching a spring, and then it was only a question of 
time when they would faint for thirst, and open their 
gates. But with that deep well bubbling and swelling 
below, they could hold the fortress against every assault. 

So it is with a man in this time, which is, I suppose, 
only the epitome of all times. If he has a good and honest 
heart, it is like that spring in the castle, a fountain, from 
which he can draw strength to hold his own, whatever 



DECLAMATIONS. l6l 

comes. A man is weak only in his power of resistance to 
the temptations that beset him when that central deep is 
dry. Let him feel the perpetual springing of this life, and 
he fears nothing that can come. It is no more trouble for 
him to be true in all things, than it is to be true to the 
mother that bore him, or the child that stands at his knee. 
It no more occurs to him that he can swerve from his 
integrity, if the law does not hold him to it, than he can 
realize that the law restrains him from smiting his mother 
on the face. 

I know of no blessing I would ask of Heaven before a 
good and honest heart. If I were conscious I did not pos- 
sess it as I should, to make me the man I ought to be, I 
would like the whole burden of my prayer then day and 
night to be, " Lord, give me a good and honest heart." If 
I read a book, it should be one that could tell me of some- 
thing about a man who had such a heart, and how it car- 
ried him through mightily, and never failed till he had 
crossed the river and was safe in heaven. I would watch 
for all that was passing around me, to see where the hon- 
est heart came in, and what it did ; and weep and laugh 
and sing or pray over that, and take off my cap to it, and 
shake out my banner for it, and strike my harp for it, and 
wear my crown. Everything that was real and true, that 
shone with honor and honesty, I would cherish as the 
choicest and chiefest. Everything that was base and 
mean, I would hate and fear, as men hate and fear the 
adder. There should be no compromise, no divided heart, 
any more than there is in any other matter of life and 
death ; this side and that should be worlds to me as they 
were to the Master, eternal life and eternal death. And I 
would choose life that I might live. 

Robert Collyer. 



l62 READING AND SPEAKING. 



PATRIOTISM. 



Bereft of patriotism, the heart of a nation will be cold 
and cramped and sordid ; the arts will have no enduring 
impulse, and commerce no invigorating soul ; society will 
degenerate, and the mean and vicious triumph. Patriotism 
is not a wild and glittering passion, but a glorious reality. 
The virtue that gave to Paganism its dazzling lustre, to 
Barbarism its redeeming trait, to Christianity its heroic 
form, is not dead. It still lives to console, to sanctify 
humanity. It has its altar in every clime : its worship and 
festivities. 

On the heathered hills of Scotland the sword of Wallace 
is yet a bright tradition. The genius of France, in the 
brilliant literature of the day, pays its high homage to the 
piety and heroism of the young Maid of Orleans. In her 
new Senate Hall, England bids her sculptor place, among 
the effigies of her greatest sons, the images of Hampden 
and of Russell. In the gay and graceful capital of Belgium, 
the daring hand of Geefs has reared a monument full of 
glorious meaning to the three hundred martyrs of the 
revolution. 

By the soft blue waters of Lake Lucerne stands the 
chapel of William Tell. On the anniversary of his revolt 
and victory, across those waters, as they glitter in the July 
sun, skim the light boats of the allied cantons. From the 
prows hang the banners of the republic, and as they near 
the sacred spot, the daughters of Lucerne chant the hymns 
of their old poetic land. Then bursts forth the glad Te 
De?tm, and Heaven again hears the voice of that wild 
chivalry of the mountains, which, five centuries since, 
pierced the white eagle of Vienna, and flung it bleeding on 
the rocks of Uri. 



DECLAMATIONS. 163 

At Innspruck, in the black aisle of the old cathedral, the 
peasant of the Tyrol kneels before the statue of Andreas 
Hofer. In the denies and valleys of the Tyrol, who forgets 
the day on which he fell within the walls of Mantua ? It 
is a festive day all through his quiet, noble land. In that 
old cathedral his inspiring memory is recalled amid the 
pageantries of the altar : his image appears in every house : 
his victories and virtues are proclaimed in the songs of the 
people ; and when the sun goes down, a chain of fires, in 
the deep red light of which the eagle spreads his wings 
and holds his giddy revelry, proclaims the glory of the 
chief whose blood has made his native land a sainted spot 
in Europe. Thomas Francis Meagher. 



THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. 

In one of the mightiest battles of the Spanish Peninsula, 
Napier, I think it is, records that a truce was sounded at 
noon, that the roar of artillery ceased, and the men, who 
but an hour before had been whirling like storms upon 
one another, came down to the brook which divided the 
battle-field to quench their thirst, and reached forth 
friendly hands and exchanged kindly greetings across it. 
To-night there is a truce throughout this land. We seize 
the charmed hour to hush every conflict ; to let the whirl 
of business run out to stillness ; to pause, and from oppo- 
site sides look kindly at each other. While other nations 
are casting off the chains of despotism, while God is hurl- 
ing and drawing the oppressors of the earth down to the 
rocks, what is to be the position, what the watchword, of 
this Republic ? 



164 READING AND SPEAKING. 






To-day God is bringing before this people new problems. 
Now it is one subject, now another. Now it is temper- 
ance ; now the position of woman ; then, again, that great 
shadow, looming above the horizon, the reconstruction of 
the Republic. Vast, difficult, hazardous questions ! Who 
shall take them and tear them open, and let the light shine 
through them ? It is the work of this generation to prove 
to the nineteenth century, in the face of Christendom and 
for the race, the fact that the people do actually govern. 
The American Republic must live. Popular commotion 
and partisan fury may dash their mad wars against it ; but 
they shall roll back shattered, spent. Persecution shall 
not shake it, fanaticism disturb it, nor revolutions change 
it. But it shall stand towering sublime, like the last 
mountain in the deluge, while the earth rocks at its feet 
and thunders peal above its head — majestic, immutable, 
magnificent. 

The only forces in the moral world are men of conviction. 
We live in a land where laws are nothing, armies nothing, 
unless sustained and shielded by public opinion. If a 
thousand cannon are alongside, they do not alter the 
opinions of a million of men. How many Bull Runs do 
you think it would take to drive the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence out of New York and Massachusetts ? I cannot 
answer for New York ; but I know you could steep the 
ground of the Bay State with the blood of a hundred Bull 
Runs, and she would spring to her feet and cry : " All 
men are created equal ! " 

Despair not, then, soldier, statesman, citizen. We shall 
yet dwell together in harmony, and but one nation shall in- 
habit our sea-girt borders. Liberty and union shall spread 
a civilization from the Occident to the Orient — from 
the flowery shores of the great Southern gulf to the 



DECLAMATIONS. 1 65 

frozen barriers of the great Northern bay ! Not inter- 
twined with slavery, but purged of its contamination ; a 
civilization that means universal freedom, universal en- 
franchisement, universal brotherhood ! 

Wendell Phillips. 



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